Social Welfare Quotes

“If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern!”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“There's a lot to consider at the intersection of business and social work. It's about earning a lot of money while adding a lot of value to peoples lives and making the world a better place.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“She told us that social work was a young profession still finding itself. She called it a "creative science" and said that, in her opinion, the best social workers were intelligent and compassionate, and while she could give us ideas and tools to help our fellow man, she couldn't teach us how to put ourselves into another person's shoes. She said, "If you don't already know how to do that, you should drop this class and consider another line of work.”
― Anita Diamant, The Boston Girl

“In a truly civilized society there wouldn't be any billionaire, nor will there be any homeless, for all the revenue generated through taxing the rich would be distributed among the people through welfare initiatives.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine

“Wherever you work, work hard and educate yourself continuously. You must never forget social welfare, ethics and honesty. However, there is no guarantee for your career progression. Therefore, don't expect that only the best people will be promoted.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“Then I remember social workers don't care.”
― Eleni Hale, Stone Girl

“How can we make progress? Not with luxury but by lifting the other.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Gente Mente Adelante: Prejudice Conquered is World Conquered

“Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“What people do with their money is not a private affair, each penny above necessity belongs to social welfare.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“Disparity, Education and Economy

Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity. Citizens of earth could force big tech to pay their employees fair wages tomorrow, if they just stop buying their fancy, overpriced products and go for humbler alternatives unless the companies bring down their disparities in salary.

The CEO may enjoy certain benefits of their position, but not until those working at the bottom can afford the fundamentals of life for their family. I'll say it to you plainly. An employee wronged is a company wronged.

You see, trying to build a disparity-free economy pursuing revenue is like trying to achieve pregnancy through vasectomy. So long as greed drives the economy, it's not economy, but catastrophe. So long as greed drives the industries, it's not industrialization, it is vandalization.

Ambition to climb the ladder of status so that you could be on the affluent side of disparity, is no ambition of a civilized human, it's the ambition of a caveman. So, before you pursue an ambition in life, educate yourself on a civilized definition of ambition.

Yet the situation in our world is so pathetic that that's exactly the kind of ambition educational institutes sell. Schools and universities don't teach you to build a civilized society free from disparity, they teach you clever tactics to be on the affluent side of disparity. This is not education, this is castration.

Concern for the society should be the bedrock of education - collective welfare should be the bedrock of economy - if not, we might as well start living as hobos on the streets, because with greed as the driving principle of education and economy, sooner or later all of us will end up on the streets.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting

“A criminal mind needs consideration rather than the criminal itself. In truth, there are more criminals than those who committed a crime.”
― Harshit Walia

“Charity usually begins at home, and usually ends there, without having left.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The success of (mainly bourgeois and white) women in this area was of crucial importance to the later development of the welfare state in these countries, which were only firmly institutionalized after World War II. Insofar as many of these policies alleviated some of the risks and insecurities felt by working-class families, they also exhibited significant racial biases. To use the US as an example, it has been well noted that mothers’ pensions were not directed to relieve and generally did not support African-American and other women of colour – this, despite the racialized nature of poverty in America: in 1934 Los Angeles, Mexican Americans constituted 10 percent of the population but only 1 percent of welfare recipient (forcing thousands of Mexicans to return to Mexico) while in Atlanta, Georgia, the average amount of relief given to a white person was nearly 70 percent more than that given to a black person ($32.66 versus $19.29 per month)”
― Adrienne Roberts, Gendered States of Punishment and Welfare

“All charities would disappear from earth once the governments start taxing the rich 90% of their income and investing that revenue in public essentials – such as, groceries, housing, healthcare and education.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine

“Without the concern for social welfare, economic growth is inhumanly proportional to economic disparity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Martyr Meets World: To Solve The Hard Problem of Inhumanity

“Any act that involves human welfare is an act of politics - as such, science can be politics, philosophy can be politics, theology can be politics - thus, anybody who acts in the interest of human welfare is a politician, whether they hold an office or not.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“The Social Welfare Sonnet

I have no problem with capitalism,
I have problem when it's devoid of society.
I have no problem with innovation,
I have problem when it lacks accountability.
I have no problem with religion,
I have problem when it's run by bigotry.
I have no problem with intellect,
I have problem when it lacks decency.
I have no problem with advancement,
I have problem when it facilitates disparity.
I have no problem with politics,
I have problem when it loses all sanity.
No field is evil entire of its own.
Evil festers when we forget we can’t progress alone.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“Nobody has a right to comfort, unless everybody has access to the essentials of life.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“Dollar of Disparity (The Sonnet)

Millions of people go without food,
For some privileged nimrods to afford their luxuries.
Millions of people have no access to essentials,
So that celebrities can buy their lamborghinis.
The difference between phony activists and a reformer,
Is not in what they say but in their lifestyle and action.
In a world that still suffers from the lack of essentials,
Indulgence in luxury is human rights violation.
What people do with their money is not a private affair,
Each penny above necessity belongs to social welfare.
One who talks of equality while riding in a Rolls Royce,
Is the last person to be concerned of people's despair.
None has a right to luxury till all can access necessities.
Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“What’s It All About (The Sonnet)

What is this world all about!
What is this society all about!
What is this life all about!
What is our existence all about!
What are the roads all about!
What are the skyscrapers all about!
What are the bridges all about!
What are our feet all about!
What is science all about!
What is faith all about!
What is technology all about!
What is politics all about!
'Tis all about people and their welfare.
All notions to the contrary cause only despair.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather

“The problem is, in a world of humans the humans focus on everything else but humanity. If we wipe out humanity from our fancy equations, then we only wipe out ourselves. With such acts of fallacy how can we expect there to be any advancement in the world whatsoever?

Even our very notion of advancement is all messed up. Our notion of advancement prioritizes colonizing Mars over feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. If this is advancement, then the pioneers of such advancement are nothing but cancer on the face of earth.

And just like you don't collaborate with Adolf Hitler, you don't collaborate with such pioneers, that is, with toxic billionaires. If you do, then you are no better than those rich and reckless kids of emerald mine owners.

So I say again, the fate of this world lies in the hands of the civilians - everyday, ordinary civilians. When the civilians are responsible, the world is well - when the civilians are sapient, the world is swell.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability

“Money doesn’t fix the world, responsibility does. Responsibility puts a roof over the homeless, responsibility puts food in empty stomachs, responsibility elevates the fallen and forgotten parts of the world.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability

“...by the time Malcolm Fraser came to power, neoliberals working for Treasury quietly redefined 'full employment' to mean a rate of just 95 per cente employment at any time. Unsurprisingly, it's a habit of neoliberal governments to make the experience of unemployment as punitive and humiliating as possible, to discourage people from risking it. (p. 64-5”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness

“...by the time Malcolm Fraser came to power, neoliberals working for Treasury quietly redefined 'full employment' to mean a rate of just 95 per cent employment at any time. Unsurprisingly, it's a habit of neoliberal governments to make the experience of unemployment as punitive and humiliating as possible, to discourage people from risking it.”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness

“The orphanage has more than one definition. It is many things. It is loss and it is gain. it is fear and it is security. it is hurt but it is resilience.”
― Deborah Dzifah Tamakloe, Forest In The Wilderness: Life Inside A Ghanaian Orphanage

“Political Wildlife (The Sonnet)

Easiest way to study animal behavior
without going on safari, is to sit
in front of a political debate.
Political salesmen are ideal specimen
of wildlife in their natural habitat.

Listen to all the howling and screaming,
Listen to all the brainless twatter.
You shall learn a lot about the brutal wild,
By watching the cannibals devour each other.

In the world of political haftwits,
Politics is just "left and right" affair.
Where all left and right come to an end,
There begins actual human welfare.

Partisan world is a loveless world,
where popular truth is but a lie.
We don't need to lean left or right,
it is time, human heart spreads human-wide.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“Any exclusive system is a system of exclusion.”
― Emi Nietfeld, Acceptance: A Memoir

“The notion that unemployment benefits shouldn’t be provided, as they might foster a dependency mindset, reflects a conservative paranoia.”
― William Castano-Bedoya, We the Other People: The Beggars of the Mercury Lights

“When poor and working people in the United States become a politically viable force, relief institutions and their technologies of control shift to better facilitate cultural denial and to rationalize a brutal return to subserviency. Relief institutions are machines for undermining the collective power of poor and working-class people, and for producing in difference in everyone else.”
― Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

“In our modern urban civilization, multitudes of our people have been condemned to urban anonymity — to living the kind of life where many of them neither know nor care about their own neighbors. They find themselves isolated from the life of their community and their nation, driven by social forces beyond their control into little individual worlds in which their own individual objectives have become paramount to the collective good. Social objectives, social welfare, the good of the nation, the democratic way of life — all these have become nebulous, meaningless, sterile phrases.

This course of urban anonymity, of individual divorce from the general social life, erodes the foundations of democracy. For although we profess to be citizens of a democracy, and although we may vote once every four years, millions of our people feel deep down in their heart of hearts that there is no place for them that they do not “count.” They have no voice of their own, no organization (really their own instead of absentee) to represent them, no way in which they may lay their hand or their heart to the shaping of their own destinies.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals