Worth consideration

I admit it. I read through some blog/article comment strings. Someone posted these quotes into the thread.

Inspiring:

"I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading them or driving them out of it"
-Benjamin Franklin

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they COULD and SHOULD do for themselves."
-Abraham Lincoln

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers have acquired too much, in order to spare to others who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equaled industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, 'to guarantee to everyone of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.'"
-Thomas Jefferson

"The utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of wealth], and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable as those which vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional."
-Samuel Adams

(sorry, I couldn't resist the sam adams label!)