Quotes About General Welfare

#1. Patriotism should be sought for and will be found in right living. No man can be a good Latter-day Saint and not be true to the best interests and general welfare of his country.

Joseph Smith Jr.

#2. If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare ... they may appoint teachers in every state ... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.

James Madison

#3. For me, liberals are people who seek to use government to promote the general welfare.

Douglas Massey

#4. A nation's wealth is too serious a matter to be left to the wealthy. The riches of a nation belong to all, to be shared among all for the general welfare.

Robert Payne

#5. No right of preference exists in favor of person, property, or business. Personal claims and ambitions must yield in favor of whatever best serves the general welfare.

Charles Lindbergh

#6. An ideal is an unselfish aspiration. Its purpose is the general welfare not only of this but of future generations. It is a thing of the spirit. It is a generous and humane desire that all men may share equally in a common good. Our ideals are the cement, which binds human society.

Herbert Hoover

#7. We are attempting, by this Constitution, to abolish factions, and to unite all parties for the general welfare.

Alexander Hamilton

#8. ... certain feet were made for stepping on ,in order to improve the breed, promote the general welfare and minimize the ancient insolence of office..

Robert A. Heinlein

#9. Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.

Thomas Jefferson

#10. I thought the function of the government was to promote the general welfare, not to provide it.

Ronald Reagan

#11. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ...

James Madison

#12. To establish justice and to promote the general welfare, America does not need the abortion license.

Robert Casey

#13. The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

Lascelles Abercrombie

#14. The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

Annie Besant

#15. But the general welfare must restrict and regulate the exertions of the individuals, as the individuals must derive a supply of their strength from social power.

Friedrich List

#16. We believe that only government has the capacity
not to mention the political and moral responsibility
to promote the general welfare.
Father Kramer as quoted in Sweet Charity?

Janet Poppendieck

#17. Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#18. Harshaw held that certain feet were made for stepping on, in order to improve the breed, promote the general welfare, and minimize the ancient insolence of office; he had seen at once that Heinrich had such feet.

Robert A. Heinlein

#19. Patriotism is the intelligent appreciation that one's own welfare is inseparably connected with the general welfare and that to prosper personally one must intelligently do his utmost to maintain the general prosperity.

Julius Sterling Morton

#20. An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.

Friedrich List

#21. Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.

Dorothy Thompson

#22. Though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society;

Adam Smith

#23. If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.

Frederic Bastiat

#24. Sexual selection will also be largely dominated by natural selection tending towards the general welfare of the species.

Charles Darwin

#25. This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.

Henry A. Wallace

#26. I wish the government would read the Constitution. I think that would probably help quite a bit. And maybe they did read it and maybe they got confused when they read the preamble which says one of the duties is to promote the general welfare.

Benjamin Carson

#27. The natural tendency of the state is inflation. This statement will shock those accustomed to viewing the state as a committee of the whole nation ardently dispensing the general welfare, but I think it nonetheless true.

Murray Rothbard

#28. There is no other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work.

Ludwig Von Mises

#29. We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe - nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.

Abraham Lincoln

#30. I'm fighting now only for individual captive dolphins and dolphins in general but also for people, for the mind and sensibilities of future generations toward the world itself.

Richard O'Barry

#31. Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Theodore Roosevelt

#32. For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.

Charles Erwin Wilson

#33. The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare. Nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements.

John Marshall Harlan

#34. He must protect the lives and interests of the people, appeal to his fellow citizens' patriotic interests, and, in general, set the welfare of the community above his own

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#35. The powers of Congress are totally inadequate to preserve the balance between the respective States, and oblige them to do those things which are essential for their own welfare or for the general good.

Henry Knox

#36. It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

Edmund Burke

#37. The benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all.

Calvin Coolidge

#38. Calling out the supposed 'abuse' of welfare by blacks and other people of color is a time-honored tactic for distracting the general public from actual national issue. It also taps into latent, subconscious racism, which is what right-wing politicians would call a 'win-win.

Justin Simien

#39. In general, we run the farm like a business instead of a welfare recipient, and we adhere to historically-validated patterns.

Joel Salatin