Human welfare

“ Under advancement by the State we understand the duty of the whole community to step in with its means wherever the welfare of the individual does not suffice to obtain him a life worthy of a human being. ”

“ But we are now considering a subject so fundamental in human welfare, so much wider than any class interest, that any variety of opinion respecting it, is of vital importance to be noted, and must be recognised by all intelligent persons. ”

“ As human beings have become dependent on one another, the well-being or the degradation of one individual or family does not stop there. It strongly influences the welfare of other individuals and families. For their own protection people have not only the right, but the obligation to make a government that shall foster and advance the common welfare. ”

“ Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. ”

“ Such services must consist of care, research or education in the fields of human health or social adjustment and rehabilitation; relief of victims of natural disasters and other emergencies; or assistance to those who are impoverished and therefore in need of food, shelter, clothing, education, and basic human welfare services. ”

“ Magnitude of the Evil.—Since health and freedom began to be recognized as the primary conditions of human welfare, the conviction is gaining ground that the principles of our legislative system need a general revision. ”

“ In the main, however, the care of the health of the people is a governmental function, whether it has to do with the prevention of sickness or the satisfactory medical treatment and nursing of the sick.
There is no early prospect of voluntary workers becoming unnecessary; for average human nature, as represented on governmental bodies, is shortsighted and needs much education, morally and intellectually, before it will undertake the whole sphere of work called for in the interest of the welfare of the mother and her child. ”

“ The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that 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. ”

“ They involve the welfare of a hundred millions of the human race. We are getting to that time when we shall require not only the ablest men but many of them, in every department, to protect and administer the affairs of the Nation. ”

“ The few in both sections who have tried to stand in the way of human betterment and adaptation to the conditions of the world's advancement have had to suffer the consequences of their rashness and be dropped from the rolls of the promoters of the nation's welfare. ”

“ But these deficiencies and others which no doubt are ours will not debar us, let us hope, from being permitted to join the grand onward march of humanity, and particularly of that portion of the human family inhabiting the New World, towards higher conditions of physical and moral welfare. ”

“ The world has realized that the welfare of a few cannot be assured except by securing the welfare of all, while the security of all assures the safety of our own special few. Christian effort is no longer limited to the churches. The human heart has overflowed with a great yearning to make this earth better by filling it with healthier, happier, more human people. In response to this yearning everywhere heads are planning and hands are clasping in a determined effort to accomplish this result. ”

“ By striving after personal welfare, neither personal nor general welfare is attained. By striving after self-forgetfulness, both personal and general Welfare are attained. *⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠* Theoretically, three organisations of human society are possible. The first is this: people—the best people, God's—will give such a law to men as will ensure the greatest happiness to mankind, and the authorities will enforce the fulfilment of this law. ”

“ We have slashed this redtape to 37 States, covering 75 percent of all the people on welfare in America, so that they can take steps to fix the broken system. State by State, we are building a welfare system that demands work, requires responsibility, and protects our children. ”

“ But more important is the fact that social welfare depends more largely upon a proper understanding of its problems by the local community and a willingness to grapple with them intelligently and sympathetically, than upon the remedial treatment afforded through professional workers, courts, institutions and other public agencies. Social welfare is like health, for which sanitation and hygiene are more important than doctors and medicines. ”

“ Apart from all considerations connected with the man's own welfare, and the happiness of his family, there were those which were inseparable from the common safety, in the present state of the country. ”

“ The beneficences subsumed under the name liberty that must flow from the sacrifices that we have made for the welfare of the people must assure their health, contribute to their happiness, and promote their efficiency. Disease must be prevented, not by personal effort as on the part of physicians who do it for gain or fame, but by the state, which shall devote adequate sums for research, investigation, propaganda, and enforcement of the principles of sanitation. ”

“ My approach to welfare reform should not only open the doors of opportunity for our citizens who are on public assistance but also prepare them to walk proudly and competently through those doors. Our goal is to build a system of welfare that will encourage self-respect, build strength of character, and develop to the fullest each individual's potential for a productive, meaningful life. ”

“ Our welfare is part and parcel of the aggregate welfare of all those for whom we are working, and our welfare and their welfare are not only a condition of the present, but are also a condition of the future. The welfare of our children and our children's children, and of those whose interests will be in common with theirs, is part and parcel of our own present welfare. This is the true philosophy by which we who are sane and conscientious are guided. Upon such philosophy are based all economics and all prudence. ”

“ The American people have decided that it is better for people to work than be on welfare, that welfare should be a temporary help, not a way of life, but that the solution should support children and families, not undermine them. ”

“ The common welfare urgently demands a return to him from whom we should never have gone astray; to him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,—and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. ”

“ Knowing the needs of humanity subjectively in all the higher walks of life, and objectively in the world of work, in the charities, in the asylums and prisons, in the sanitary condition of our streets and public buildings, they are peculiarly fitted to write, speak and vote intelligently on all these questions of such vital, far-reaching consequence to the welfare of society. ”

“ Of these laws the chief seems to be that Providence has commended the welfare of every man chiefly to his own keeping, not to that of others; and has so ordered things that men, in pursuing their own welfare within the limits set by justice, are ordinarily contributing to the general welfare. ”

“ To help those least fortunate of all, I am recommending a new public welfare program, stressing services instead of support, rehabilitation instead of relief, and training for useful work instead of prolonged dependency. ”

“ Reason cannot dictate to us autocratically in matters of some absolutely true welfare, it can only indicate the most frequent, most essential, and most universal welfare in a certain perceived number of welfares. ”

“ These are four different kinds of welfare, each of which is essential, and only confusion of thought follows any attempt to treat them all as wealth, however they may be intermingled and exchanged. Health is essential in gaining a full measure of wealth and wisdom, and perhaps in maintaining genuine character; but a healthy life gives no assurance of complete welfare. The facts concerning health in a community make a distinct subject [pg 002] of study for promotion of welfare, and we call it public hygiene. ”

“ Those who receive Government assistance have certain responsibilities: the responsibility to seek work or get education and training that will help them get a job, and the responsibility to get their lives in order. That means establishing lifestyles that will enable them to fulfill their potential, not destroy it.
We have responsibilities, too. We must structure our welfare programs so that they reverse policies which lock in a lifestyle of dependency and subtly destroy self-esteem. We must encourage family formation and family stability. ”

“ Not only for the sake of the poor children so unfortunately circumstanced, but also for the welfare of the State, preventive measures are imperative. It is an old and a true saying that "prevention is better than cure"—and cheaper too ”

“ We should reform welfare to move people from welfare to work.
But we know that business has a role to play, too, if we want people to have better lives, provide for their families, and face the future with confidence. ”

“ We've also pressed ahead on fundamental reforms to make the welfare system reflect the basic values that have stood up so well for so long, that if you bring a child into this world, you must take responsibility for that child; that Government will not subsidize irresponsible or reckless behavior; that welfare is a second chance, not a way of life. ”

“ The American people need a welfare system that honors American values: work, family, and personal responsibility. In 1994, and again this year, I sent Congress a sweeping welfare reform plan that would impose strict time limits on how long people can stay on welfare and strict work requirements for people when they are on welfare. ”

“ In the face of widespread hardship our people have demonstrated daily a magnificent sense of humanity, of individual and community responsibility for the welfare of the less fortunate. They have grown in their conceptions and organization for cooperative action for the common welfare. ”

“ And the more numerous the body, and the more changeable its component parts, the more difficult it will be to preserve the personal responsibility, as well as the uniform action, of the successive members to the great objects of the public welfare. ”

“ Within the influence then of your own bounded circle, pursue those means of promoting the welfare of the individuals consigned to your care and protection, which lies within the scope of all those in whose hands the destinies of their less fortunate brethren are placed. ”

“ It is within our local communities that the real contribution to the welfare of our citizens is made. Those closest to the problem-the social workers in State and local governments, area agencies, and private and voluntary organizations-are usually the most qualified persons to decide what help is needed and the best way to provide it. ”

“ The different welfares, in so far as their beneficent qualities are concerned, are to be distinguished only by their height and breadth, by the quantity of their dimensions, by their numeral relations. Every welfare, whether true or seeming, is perceived by the senses, by practices of life, not by abstract reason. ”

“ The live questions to-day concern not the material so much as the moral development of the nation. For it is seen that the future welfare of the people depends on the creation of a finer type of civic life. ”

“ THE welfare of the people is the first great law. The old Latin teaching, fortunately, still holds good, and in no phase of life has it a more potent bearing than that relating to the health of a nation. With the onward march of civilisation, the growing up of large cities within comparatively narrow confines, and the rush and scurry of a money-making world, the preservation of a people's health ought to be a matter of supreme moment. ”

“ Here more than there is the tendency to exaggerate legislation and to neglect enforcement of law. Instead of harnessing the whole army of workingmen to the crusade and strengthening civic agencies such as factory, health, and tenement departments, houses are built and given to men, clubs are formed to amuse factory girls, amateur theatricals are organized. All this is called "welfare work." "What is welfare work?" ”

“ The whole is no greater than the sum of all its parts, and when the individual health, safety, and welfare are sacrificed or neglected, the state must suffer. 1
Under this theory, it is apparent that the question which we are considering involves an important matter of public policy. ”

“ Every movement which seeks to abolish this injustice, and to substitute a fairer and more equable system, is a movement which at the same time tends to raise the standard of public health. Any legislation, social or revolutionary, which makes for the improvement of industrial conditions, raises the level of public health through raising the welfare (i.e., resistance) of the individual. ”

“ But practice assigns the most contradictory things to different people at different times as means to their welfare. What is welfare in one place, is disaster in another, and vice versa. Understanding, or reason, has nothing else to do in the matter than to number these various welfares as they are made real by sense perceptions in various persons and times, and degrees of intensity, in the order in which they appear, and thus to distinguish the small from the great, the essential from the unessential, the concrete from the general. ”