Quotes About Foreign Aid

#1. The Mexicans bowed down when we talked about removing their foreign aid, and then they began cooperating with our country.

Joe Arpaio

#2. Foreign aid is not something the vast majority of Americans support, but definitely not conservatives.

Rand Paul

#3. Foreign aid is a method by which the United States maintains a position of influence and control around the world

John F. Kennedy

#4. We stand for self-reliance. We hope for foreign aid but cannot be dependent on it; we depend on our own efforts, on the creative power of the whole army and the entire people.

Mao Zedong

#5. The US really has to get out in front. We are the biggest per person, by a substantial amount, greenhouse emitters, and we give the most foreign aid, not per person but in absolute.

Bill Gates

#6. Foreign aid has been perfected so that it subsidizes corporate U.S. agriculture while preventing poor countries from developing profitable agriculture or feeding themselves.

Nicholas Von Hoffman

#7. Fortifications, artillery, foreign aid - will be of no value, unless the ordinary soldier knows that it is HE guarding his country

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

#8. Despite the hundreds of non-governmental organizations and the continued outpouring of foreign aid, East Africa remains as a region overwhelmed by extreme poverty.

Jacqueline Novogratz

#9. We need a revolution in development thinking and practice. Foreign aid, debt relief, family planning, democracy, education, and free markets have not succeeded.

William Easterly

#10. Congress has shortchanged not only foreign aid but foreign policy. A mistaken notion that diplomats are unimportant and hence undeserving of support grips conservative legislators, especially.

Anthony Lewis

#11. Many critics of the Palestinians, especially those in Congress, think the current calm is merely the eye of the storm. That's why the House of Representatives approved a foreign aid package last week that forbade the direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority .

Suzanne Fields

#12. Some people have been talking about - every place I go, they bring up the issue of foreign aid. I go, 'You can't get rid of all foreign aid.'

Dan Webster

#13. Science is one of the comparative advantages of our knowledge-based economy, and focusing on our prowess in providing better tools to address diseases of poverty is one of the best forms of foreign aid.

Seth Berkley

#14. Foreign trade is not a replacement for foreign aid, of course, but foreign aid to a country that doesn't also engage in significant amounts of foreign trade is more likely to end up in the pockets of dictators and cronies.

Brian Behlendorf

#15. I experienced how foreign aid for large-scale vaccination projects helps to save the life of children and thus give a real input to growth and to escaping poverty.

Jonas Gahr Store

#16. By pouring money and goods into devastated regions, foreign aid workers sometimes compound the disruption and debauch the survivors.

James Buchan

#17. Foreign aid goes from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

Rand Paul

#18. Barack Obama has talked a lot about changing the way America relates to the world, and few areas are as ripe for reform as our policies on foreign aid.

Iqbal Quadir

#19. None of what we [as country] have done is credited. None of the good works. Our foreign affairs budget, foreign aid budget, none of it is ever thanked.

Rush Limbaugh

#20. China should significantly augment the foreign aid and public goods it provides, so it can use these as a bargaining chip in its efforts to get more say in global decision-making

Wang Yizhou

#21. One of the most ridiculous defenses of foreign aid is that it is a very small part of our national income. If the average American set fire to a five-dollar bill, it would be an even smaller percentage of his annual income. But everyone would consider him foolish for doing it.

Thomas Sowell

#22. By philosophy the mind of man comes to itself, and from henceforth rests on itself without foreign aid, and is completely master of itself, as the dancer of his feet, or the boxer of his hands.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

#23. And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change.

John Perkins

#24. There is a profound contrast between the effects of foreign aid and of voluntary private investment: foreign aid goes from government to government. It is therefore almost inevitably statist and socialistic.

Henry Hazlitt

#25. A terrific, stimulating book ... Ramalingam clearly and engagingly shows how the use of complex adaptive systems thinking can significantly strengthen and enhance the impacts and effectiveness of global foreign aid.

Jerry Sabloff

#26. I would replace most foreign aid with a tax credit for businesses to invest. I think U.S. bureaucrats giving foreign bureaucrats money is a guaranteed failure. And we've had about 50 years' experience at failing with foreign aid.

Newt Gingrich

#27. Sound foreign policy is more than arms control, foreign aid and paying (United Nations) dues.

John McCain

#28. For American foreign aid to become more effective, it must embrace the power of partnerships, access the transformative nature of free enterprise, and leverage the abundant resources that can come from the private sector.

Mitt Romney

#29. It is hard to sell Congress and the American people on foreign aid. Is it harder to do that than it is to sell billionaires on the idea that they should give all their money away.

Bill Gates

#30. A national movement, which does not include in its platform the demand for an economical change advantageous to the masses has no chance of success unless supported by foreign aid.

Peter Kropotkin

#31. Foreign aid projects have pumped billions of dollars into the Afghan economy.

Richard Engel

#32. Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country.

Ron Paul

#33. Aid makes itself superfluous if it is working well. Good aid takes care to provide functioning structures and good training that enables the recipient country to later get by without foreign aid. Otherwise, it is bad aid.

Paul Kagame

#34. There is no softer target in GOP primaries than the United Nations and foreign-aid spending.

Elliott Abrams

#35. Investing in foreign aid would also help achieve China's strategic objectives, since aid could become a powerful tool in the expansaion of China's influence.

Wang Yizhou

#36. Each one of my budgets has taken a meat axe to foreign aid, because I think we ought to quit sending it to countries that hate us.

Rand Paul

#37. Do I like foreign aid? Sometimes, but not every time. Don't like giving money to our enemies, but I love giving money to Israel.

Dan Webster

#38. Foreign aid must be viewed as an investment, not an expense ... but when foreign aid is carefully guided and targeted at a specific issue, it can and must be effective.

Kay Granger

#39. In this financial year we will be spending at least $1.5 billion on foreign aid and we cannot be sure that this money will be properly spent, as corruption and mismanagement in many of the recipient countries are legend.

Pauline Hanson

#40. I'm the ranking Republican on the foreign aid appropriations subcommittee, so I know Tunisia well.

Lindsey Graham

#41. Taiwan gives a lot of foreign aid to Costa Rica, so it looks like they are basically buying the right to fish, even though it's not legal.

Paul Watson

#42. If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.

John F. Kennedy

#43. ...this money goes to a war machine, a war machine that attacks its own citizens and those of other countries to force them into submission. They spend billions, even trillions of dollars on foreign aid while our own citizens cannot dig out of poverty.

J.C. Allen

#44. Foreign aid breeds kleptocracies, or governments of thieves.

James Bovard

#45. Maybe this will be the beginning of a trend? Flat taxes, cutting foreign aid, a referendum on Europe, grammar schools. Who knows?

Nigel Farage

#46. Foreign aid is neither a failure nor a panacea. It is, instead, an important tool of American policy that can serve the interests of the United States and the world if wisely administered.

Lee H. Hamilton

#47. Foreign aid is important. If it's done right, it spreads America's influence around the world in a positive way.

Marco Rubio

#48. The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid.

Joseph Stiglitz

#49. My father is an economist who specialized in foreign food policy, and my mother worked for AID, a branch of the State Department, so food in regards to world affairs was talked about a lot.

Jennifer Gilmore

#50. The things you leave school knowing - some dates and long division - so much of it has been of no use to me. Schools should teach the basics of cookery, first aid, how to look after your money and how to speak foreign languages. Useful things.

Jane Asher

#51. No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.

Samuel Adams

#52. To increase aid to the Pakistan government when religious freedom is not upheld is tantamount to an anti-Christian foreign policy.

Keith O'Brien

#53. Foreign Assistance is not an end in itself. The purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it is no longer needed.

Barack Obama

#54. [Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise.

Arundhati Roy

#55. The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages.

Fredric Jameson

#56. I have said it before but it bears repeating: Aid is not a gift. The United States provides foreign assistance because it serves OUR interests.

Howard Berman

#57. During the Cold War, the U.S. instituted a policy of sending money to governments in poor countries to buy their political loyalty. While studies show that sending aid to foreign governments creates allegiance, it does not lead to economic progress.

Iqbal Quadir

#58. Government-to-government aid rests on socialistic assumptions and promotes socialism and stagnation, whereas private foreign investment rest on capitalist assumptions and promotes private enterprise and maximum economic growth.

Henry Hazlitt