Welfare

“ 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. ”

“ 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 what do you call the common good?" replied the little doctor, with childish pertinence.
"Ay," said Aaron, with a laugh, "that's it." The miners were all stirring now, to take part in the discussion.
"What do I call the common good?" repeated the landlady. "That all people should study the welfare of other people, and not only their own."
"They are not to study their own welfare?" said the doctor.
"Ah, that I did not say," replied the landlady. "Let them study their own welfare, and that of others also."
"Well then," said the doctor, "what is the welfare of a collier?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I say to those who are on welfare, and especially to those who have been trapped on welfare for a long time: For too long our welfare system has undermined the values of family and work, instead of supporting them. The Congress and I are near agreement on sweeping welfare reform. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or should the welfare of the majority give way as a social ideal to the welfare of the best—the most capable, the most upright, the most enduring? Is it possible to evolve a social order in which the greatest good of all can be well served, since biological inequalities are so very great? ”

“ The notion of welfare was an inference and resultant from these mystic and utilitarian generalizations.
34. Definition of the mores. When the elements of truth and right are developed into doctrines of welfare, the folkways are raised to another plane. They then become capable of producing inferences, developing into new forms, and extending their constructive influence over men and society. Then we call them the mores. The mores are the folkways, including the philosophical and ethical generalizations as to societal welfare which are suggested by them, and inherent in them, as they grow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But who will find among these natural duties, set forth to us by our consciousness, the obligation to leave to all our children an equal share in the enjoyment of our property? Or, though consciousness tells us we ought to provide for our children's welfare, whose consciousness tells him that the enjoyment of property is in itself welfare? Whether our children's welfare is best served by their all sharing equally in our property, depends on circumstances and on the state of the community in which we live. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Human Welfare and the Social Question.—This is the first of a series of articles on the psychology of industry. I. Individual welfare in general. In one sense, "everyone is the forger of his own welfare." If we understand wherein another's welfare consists, we cannot give him the qualities necessary for the appreciation of it. On the other hand, no one is complete master of his welfare. We are the sport of circumstances, of our abilities, experience, and education. But though the happiness of an individual life cannot be determined, its general conditions can be fixed. ”

“ Since, then, the welfare of the body social depends mainly on the relative smallness of Classes D and E, the selfish and the noxious, it follows that an important, if not the chief, duty to society, for all who really and reasoningly desire the well-being and progress of the community, is so to regulate their conduct as to cause these classes to become relatively smaller and smaller. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is inconceivable how much the welfare of all the country towns in the kingdom might be promoted, if you would use your charitable endeavours to raise in them a noble emulation of the manners and customs of higher life. ”

“ It implies an ability to subordinate the individual to the general welfare, to sacrifice present comfort to future good, to decide whether an act is right or wrong by making it general, to put all questions on an impersonal basis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or, to use a further argument—since the goodness of a society ultimately depends on the nature of its citizens; and since the nature of its citizens is more modifiable by early training than by anything else; we must conclude that the welfare of the family underlies the welfare of society. ”

“ Science has already so completely demonstrated its vast fruitfulness in human welfare, that it must be watched with jealous vigilance. It must result as it began, in the improvement of human welfare. [1] But what constitutes human welfare is a question which leads us into the final activity of the Career of Reason, Morals and Moral Valuation, man's attempt to determine what happiness is, and how he may attain it. ”

“ No one is more eager to end welfare— [applause] —I may be the only President who has actually had the opportunity to sit in a welfare office, who's actually spent hours and hours talking to people on welfare. ”

“ But whereas in earlier years our social welfare program was taken cynically as synonymous with hopelessness and failure, today it is looked on by a con­siderable segment of our people as the promise of a new life. ”

“ I shall endeavour, however, to show, that though in undertakings in which the general welfare of society is concerned, persons of all ranks and conditions are called upon to give them their support, yet, in the INTRODUCTION of such measures as are here recommended,— a scheme of providing for the Poor,—there are many who, by their rank and peculiar situations, are clearly pointed out as the most proper to take up the business at its commencement, and bring it forward to maturity ”

“ That any citizen may so behave as not to deduct from the aggregate welfare, it is needful that he shall perform such function, or share of function, as is of value equivalent at least to what he consumes; and it is further needful that, both in discharging his function and in pursuing his pleasure, he shall leave others similarly free to discharge their functions and to pursue their pleasures. ”

“ Can political independence ever become subordinate to social welfare? Are there any spiritual bonds that can hold more strongly than national ambitions and national pride? Such questions as these carry the student of society into a wider range of corporate life than the average man enters, but a range of life in which the welfare of every individual is involved.
315. The Significance of National Life.—The nation is a group of persons, families, and communities united for mutual protection and the promotion of the general welfare, and recognizing a sovereign power that controls them all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Others, again, would argue that the advantage and wellbeing of the community, of which each man was a member, was promoted by the observance of these moral rules; and hence the promotion of this welfare was a sufficient reason why these rules should be observed. The promotion and maintenance of the wellbeing of society was thus set forth as the ground of moral obligation. ”

“ For the last 3 years, we have been working hard to turn the welfare system around. All across America the welfare rolls are down, food stamp rolls are down, teen pregnancy rates are down compared to 4 years ago. And compared to 4 years ago, more and more people on welfare today are working as a condition of receiving welfare. ”

“ It must be remembered that the chief elements of welfare are above government. All the kindly affections which make the chief bonds of society are to be cultivated by good government, but cannot be forced by any law, either positive or prohibitive. ”

“ With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. ”