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We don't need flowery words about inequality to tell us that, and we don't need a party that has led while poverty and hunger rose to record levels to give us lectures about suffering.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there.

One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank they don't like to think of themselves as poor.

In order to counteract income inequality, it's essential to tackle poverty in an integrated way that has long-term impact. We need to give people the capacity to be resilient, to take on challenges and to learn the skills they need to work toward more prosperous futures.

Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance and when constitutional freedoms are preserved.

It is a most certain truth, that the richer we see ourselves to be, confessing at the same time our poverty, the greater will be our progress, and the more real our humility.

Poverty is not inevitable. It is a human ill that we can fight if we decide to do so together.

We need to accept the principle that sometimes poor people will die just because they are poor.