Wealthy Poor Quotes & Sayings

The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven. — Charles Dickens

When I talk about the city, I talk about a city that elevates people, which is the strength of New York. We always had the ability to do that. We had the services to do that: good schools, living-wage jobs. We're moving away from that toward a two-tiered system: a small group of very wealthy people and the rest of the city, poor and working poor. — Sal Albanese

Why would prophetic diatribes against the wealthy coincide with prophetic diatribes against the worship of gods other than Yahweh? Maybe because of the natural connection between resentment of Israel's upper class and opposition to the internationalism that, as we've seen, was linked to alien gods. Archaeological excavations show Hosea's era to be a time of great economic inequality among Israelites. It was also a time of expanding international trade, 35 and it could not have escaped the attention of the poor that the rich were closely tied to that trade - not just because they controlled it and profited from it, but because so many pricey imports wound up in their homes. 36 — Robert Wright

You should also know that happiness cannot be linked to wealth, education, social status, or anything else. You know some poor people are happy; others sad. Some educated people are happy; others sad. Some wealthy people are happy; others sad. In other words, you see happy and sad people in all walks of life. — Pratap C. Singhal M.D.

Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy. — Thomas Paine

A thought crossed his mind: How do you make poor people feel wealthy when wages are stagnant? You give them cheap loans. — Michael Lewis

Not every happy person is rich, and, Not every rich person is happy. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Our dreams are our precious diamonds; without them, we are endlessly poor. Let us perpetually dream to be overly wealthy! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

As a broad generalization, liberals see income as a public good that is distributed, like crayons in a kindergarten class. If so-and-so didn't get his or her fair share of income, it's because someone or something - government, the system - didn't distribute income properly. To the extent conservatives see income inequality as a problem, it is as an indication of more concrete problems. If the poor and middle class are falling behind the wealthy, it might be a sign of declining or stagnating wages or lackluster job creation. In other words, liberals tend to see income inequality as the disease, and conservatives tend to see it as a symptom. — Jonah Goldberg

Over and over, the effects of America's diffusion, and then of its efforts to adjust to that diffusion, seemed to reach the wealthy and advantaged as rewards, but hit the poor and disadvantaged as punishments. — Yuval Levin

There is little to be said in favour of poverty, but it was often an incubator of true friendship. Many people will appear to befriend you when you are wealthy, but precious few will do the same when you are poor — Nelson Mandela

No one is born poor. People choose to become and remain poor. No one became wealthy from begging. Only people who have set limits on themselves do that. No one became wealthy from living off handouts. This is not the will of God for anyone. No one became wealthy from foraging in people's bins. Only rats do that. You can excel and make money where you are without running helter skelter in search of green pastures. — Uyoyou C. Charles-Iyoha

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

A simple pecking order has always characterized mankind's relationship to waste: The wealthy throw out what they do not want, the poor scavenge what they can, and whatever remains is left to rot. — Dan Fagin

We all know how 'modern democracies take loaves from the wealthy.' It's the slipups in the 'pass them out to the poor' department that inspire a study of Economics. — P. J. O'Rourke

When I was young if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealthy, she became a pet and a doll. - Susan B. Anthony A — Gail Collins

The only place where we're not segregated in mass is in sports. You go to a football stadium or a basketball arena, and all of America is there: the wealthy, the poor, the black, white, Latino, conservative, liberal, and we all talk about sports. — Jason Whitlock

Rich men use most of their money to get richer. Poor men use most of their money to look richer. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

One of the things we learned from that panel is the way poor communities use a library is very different from wealthy communities. But the way the library books are measured are by how many books are taken out. And people in poor communities sometimes won't take the book out because they're afraid to. They're afraid of losing it and not being able to replace it. — Sandra Cisneros

The invention of the micro-loan was a big surprise to me. Who would have guessed loans of less than $20 made to poor people in undeveloped countries could create thriving local economies? And, even more surprisingly, that they more reliably pay off their debts than the wealthy of the world. — Joel A. Barker

At a minimum it must involve renouncing any desire or ambition to become wealthy or famous; fostering vertical solidarity between rich and poor as well as horizontal solidarity between consumers and producers; rendering effective assistance to marginalized groups in society such as the poor and immigrants; a shared commitment to traditional values, particularly with respect to sex and marriage, as well as a recognition of the importance of families and children; opposition to abortion; an emphasis on environmental stewardship and caring for creation; and a commitment to nonviolence. — Solidarity Hall

My parents didn't really restrict my movement, so I got involved in the underground music scene and the activism scene; I was doing some volunteering in food relief. I spent a lot of time throughout the city in poor areas, even though my family lived in a wealthy area. — Jess Row

A poor fisherman who knows the beauties of the misty mornings is much richer than a wealthy man who sleeps till noon in his palace! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I did note this, and set it down as yet one more of life's injustices: that the man who has been wealthy is dunned more civilly than the fellow who has ever been poor. My creditors would come to me most graciously, diffident, if not downright apologetic, for asking what was theirs. It was as if I would be doing them a great, unlooked for kindness if only I would pay them a trifling sum on my outstanding debts. I would give them tea, and polite conversation, and, even when my answer to their just entreaty had to be a regretful, "Nothing, sir, " my mortification was always entirely self-inflicted, for their civility never failed — Geraldine Brooks

Poor people don't want to stay poor. But there's a misconception that it's somehow "unfair" to poor people, or, worse, racist, to let them in on the main secret of wealthy, educated and successful people: smaller families mean larger lives. — Carl Safina

There's many ways to be wealthy, and there's many wealthy people that are very poor. Success is not about money, it's happiness, inner peace, and loving yourself. Happiness and inner peace can come from your faith in God, and loving yourself is part of His plan. — Ron Baratono

The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is. — Tony Judt

Feeble is the character, that bows to inflated ego, arrogance, and whines of affluent, whilst raising itself mercilessly on the humble and underprivileged. — Aniruddha Sastikar

A world where one tenth of the population gets to be extremely wealthy, and six tenths very poor, is not, in the long run, a stable place — Bill McKibben

In medieval times the habit arose of expressing a man's wealth, no longer in terms of the amount of land in his estate, but of the amount of pepper in his pantry. One way of saying that a man was poor was to say that he lacked pepper. The wealthy lacked pepper. The wealthy kept large stores of pepper in their houses, and let it be known that it was there: it was a guarantee of solvency. — Waverley Root

The world is the world, and we're cast in whatever roles we fall into. It's not my fault I was born wealthy any more than you were born poor. — J. Nelle Patrick

New York is for everybody; it's for the poor, it's for the middle-class, it's for the wealthy. We can't punish any one group and chase them away. — John Catsimatidis

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition. A man who has owned nothing but a bicycle all of his life feels suddenly wealthy the moment he buys an automobile ... But this happy sensation wears off. After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived. — Alan Lightman

They argue that, if the governments of developed countries want a fifty-fifty chance of hitting the agreed-upon international target of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and if reductions are to respect any kind of equity principle between rich and poor nations, then wealthy countries need to start cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by something like 8 to 10 percent a year - and they need to start right now. The idea that such deep cuts are required used to be controversial in the mainstream climate community, where the deadlines for steep reductions always seemed to be far off in the future (an 80 percent cut by 2050, for instance). But as emissions have soared and as tipping points loom, that is changing rapidly. Even Yvo de Boer, who held the U.N.'s top climate position until 2009, remarked recently that "the only way" negotiators "can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy."48 — Naomi Klein

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. — Adrian Rogers

Those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms [of the rich] do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much sufering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises. — Booker T. Washington

You can't define what's middle class, what is wealthy, what is poor. — Michael Bloomberg

At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few. The — Noam Chomsky

Don't ever feel sad about who you are. Don't wish to be a daughter or son to a wealthy home, just because you think you're poor. Look! Everybody's poor, i discovered it when i realized that its not everything that President Barrack Obama has. — Michael Bassey Johnson

I bid you to aid one another. Let the wealthy have charity for the poor. Let the strong have mercy on the weak. And I promise, if we are victorious, such a time shall never come again. — Jacqueline Carey

Money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man. It is money which in existing society opens an astounding range of choice to the poor man, a range greater than that which not many generations ago was open to the wealthy — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Change comes, when every person is adequately benefited.
We keep hearing about "change." Change will never come to all of society. Change can only come when the market system adequately provide all of the needs for all people. Millions are living in poverty in the United States and throughout the world, due to "change" passed them by, are struggling: Among them are high unemployment, the mentally challenged, poor education, many of them are homeless and hungry, sick and tired; such individuals, look for ways to move beyond their prison walls that hold them back from moving forward: Through the corridors of their prison, they observe the wealthy getting wealthier. They see the market system passing them at a fast rate of speed. Hope has long left the majority of them. There is a price that must be paid for the sins of those who have built these prisons. — Ellen J. Barrier

Poverty, like obesity, has the tendency to add at least ten years to the appearance of its victims, especially those who are over the age of twenty. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Love had not made them poor. Love had made them wealthy. In that moment, they were royalty, a king of fortune and a queen of destiny, embracing a tiny prince of peace. — Amy Harmon

When all the people in the world love one another, then the strong will not overpower the weak, the many will not oppress the few, the wealthy will not mock the poor, the honored will not disdain the humble, and the cunning will not deceive the simple. — Motsi Mabuse

THE CONSCIOUS HUMAN


You are not white,
but a rainbow of colors.
You are not black,
but golden.
You are not just a nationality,
but a citizen of the world.
You are not just for the right or left,
but for what is right over the wrong.
You are not just rich or poor,
but always wealthy in the mind and heart.
You are not perfect, but flawed.
You are flawed, but you are just.
You may just be conscious human,
but you are also a magnificent
reflection of God. — Suzy Kassem

American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively few very wealthy people and very few very poor people, but that is gone to today and the middle class is shrinking. — Os Guinness

The difference between the very wealthy and the working poor has grown. We raise that minimum wage and we move forward with the vision of this president that we have, which is everyone pays their fair share. — Barbara Boxer

The man who has been wealthy is dunned more civilly than the fellow who has ever been poor. — Geraldine Brooks

I AM wealthy, poor, healthy, sick, free, confined were first of all impressions or conditions felt before they became visible expressions. Your world is your consciousness objectified. Waste no time trying to change the outside; change the within or the impression; and the without or expression will take care of itself. When the truth of this statement dawns upon you, you will know that you have found the lost word or the key to every door. I AM (your consciousness) is the magical lost word which was made flesh in the likeness of that which you are conscious of being. — Neville Goddard

What rights have women? ... [they are] punished for breaking laws which they have no voice in making. All avenues to enterprise and honors are closed against them. If poor, they must drudge for a mere pittance if of the wealthy classes, they must be dressed dolls of fashion parlor puppets ... — Ernestine Rose

She had finally come so far that she seemed to be seeing her own life from the uppermost summit of a mountain pass. Now her path led down into the darkening valley, but first she had been allowed to see that in the solitude of the cloister and in the doorway of death someone was waiting for her who had always seen the lives of people the way villages look from a mountain crest. He had seen sin and sorrow, love and hatred in their hearts, the way the wealthy estates and poor hovels, the bountiful acres and the abandoned wastelands are all borne by the same earth. And he had come down among them, his feet had wandered among the lands, stood in the castles and in huts, gathering the sorrows and sins of the rich and the poor, and lifting them high up with him on the cross. (1081) — Sigrid Undset

Those who could - generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected - left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the "truly disadvantaged" - unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support. Wilson's — J.D. Vance

Liberals believe that crime is inextricably linked with poverty. In reality, most poor people never resort to crime, and some wealthy people commit evil acts to enrich themselves further. Harlem, East Los Angeles, the South side of Chicago are not the poorest communities in the United States. According to a new U.S. Bureau of the Census report, the poorest communities are Shannon County, South Dakota, followed by Starr, Texas, and Tunica, Mississippi. Have you ever heard of these residents rioting to protest their living conditions? — Rush Limbaugh

From the perspective of an effective altruist, Tzu Chi does some surprising things. After the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, Tzu Chi raised funds to distribute hot meals to survivors, and in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which battered New York and New Jersey in 2012, Tzu Chi distributed $10 million dollars worth of Visa debit cards, with $600 on each card, to victims of the storm.7 When I visited the Tzu Chi hospital in Hualien, I asked Rey-Sheng Her, a spokesman for Tzu Chi, why the organization would give aid to the citizens of wealthy countries like Japan and the United States, when the money could do much more good if used to help people in extreme poverty. His answer was that it is important for Tzu Chi to show compassion and love for all, rich and poor. — Peter Singer

With his continual doctrine [Bishop Hooper] adjoined due and discreet correction, not so much severe to any as to them which for abundance of riches and wealthy state thought they might do what they listed. And doubtless he spared no kind of people, but was indifferent to all men, as well rich as poor, to the great shame of no small number of men nowadays. Whereas many we see so addicted to the pleasing of great and rich men, that in the meantime they have no regard to the meaner sort of poor people, whom Christ hath bought as dearly as the other. — John Foxe

Without plenty, the wealthy lack compassion for the poor, hoarding without sharing. Without law, the strong bully the weak, stealing by force. — Jacqueline Carey

True, the free market ignores the poor precisely as it does not recognize the wealthy - it is 'no respecter of persons' — Leonard Read

What you are witnessing is the face of war a great ruler seldom sees, my lady," Master Lo Feng said to her. Her veiled face turned his way, listening. "No matter how righteous the cause, no matter who wins, the commonfolk suffer. Without plenty, the wealthy lack compassion for the poor, hoarding without sharing. Without law, the strong bully the weak, stealing by force. People will go hungry. Some will starve. Men and women will be forced to choose between feeding their parents and their children. — Jacqueline Carey

There really is no correlation between age and one's bank balance. I've met wealthy boys and broke men. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The wealthy class often looks down on the poor as "those people." And deprived people view the rich as cold and heartless. The way to break down the barrier between the rich and poor is to asociate with each other and to help one another. Make a connection. If you can break down the barrier, it may pave the way to recovery for some person, a family, maybe an entire community. — George Foreman

Wealthy people are often criticized for being obsessed with money, but the truth is, it's the poor, working, and middle class that spend the most time thinking about it. — Steve Siebold

How lame an anti-climax! If the working-class has remained "poor," only "less poor" in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class "an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power," then it has remained relatively just as poor. — Karl Marx

Gender and class are different. Poor men still have the privileges of being men, even if they do not have the privileges of being wealthy. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think that growing up very poor in a very wealthy town gave me a sense of being an outsider, and I hated it when I was growing up. — Moby

All of us, poor & rich alike, have been conditioned by our upbringings. Impoverished men & women may become lulled into a state of "learned helplessness" without hope to change their lives. Likewise, the wealthy can walk in a state of "learned blindness" ignoring the desperation of the local & global poor. — John Green

Wealthy people are just as patriotic as poor people, I honest to God believe that. — Joe Biden

I've gone from being quite wealthy, when I was defending women, to being quite poor defending men. — Warren Farrell

The rich take life one financial year at a time. The poor take life one meal at a time. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

John Locke, called the Father of Liberalism, made the argument that the individual instead of the community was the foundation of society. He believed that government existed by the consent of the governed, not by divine right. But the reason government is necessary is to defend private property, to keep people from stealing from each other. This idea appealed to the wealthy for an obvious reason: they wanted to keep their wealth. From the perspective of the poor, things look decidedly different. The rich are able to accumulate wealth by taking the labor of the poor and by turning the commons into privately owned commodities; therefore, defending the accumulation of wealth in a system that has no other moral constraints is in effect defending theft, not protecting against it. — Lierre Keith

Mitt Romney is doing what he can. He's trying very hard. He wants to unite America, the rich with the wealthy, the poor with the indigent, and the white with the Caucasian. — David Letterman

It is pretended that, as in the Preamble to the Constitution, it is "we the people" who wrote that document, rather than fifty-five privileged white males whose class interest required a strong central government. That use of government for class purposes, to serve the needs of the wealthy and powerful, has continued throughout American history, down to the present day. It is disguised by language that suggests all of us - rich and poor and middle class - have a common interest. — Howard Zinn

There is little favorable to be said about poverty, but it was often an incubator of true friendship. Many people will appear to befriend you when you are wealthy, but precious few will do the same when you are poor. If wealth is a magnet, poverty is a kind of repellent. Yet, poverty often brings out the true generosity in others. — Nelson Mandela

What motivates someone who's become wealthy to go out and work in the ghetto with those who are poor? What motivates one who has perfect health to go and work with the sick? If you understand - then you understand the root and cause of all existence. — Frederick Lenz

While independent India had been founded by high-born, well-educated men, by the twenty-first century few such types stood for elections, or voted in them, since the wealthy had extra-democratic means of securing their social and economic interests. Across India, poor people were the ones who took the vote seriously. It was the only real power they had. Another — Katherine Boo

If you have nothing but compassion, you are still very wealthy; if you have everything but compassion, you are still very poor! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It's easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy. — Anton Chekhov

the causes of poverty as put forth in the Bible are remarkably balanced. The Bible gives us a matrix of causes. One factor is oppression, which includes a judicial system weighted in favor of the powerful (Leviticus 19:15), or loans with excessive interest (Exodus 22:25-27), or unjustly low wages (Jeremiah 22:13; James 5:1-6). Ultimately, however, the prophets blame the rich when extremes of wealth and poverty in society appear (Amos 5:11-12; Ezekiel 22:29; Micah 2:2; Isaiah 5:8). As we have seen, a great deal of the Mosaic legislation was designed to keep the ordinary disparities between the wealthy and the poor from becoming aggravated and extreme. Therefore, whenever great disparities arose, the prophets assumed that to some degree it was the result of selfish individualism rather than concern with the common good. — Timothy J. Keller

Barring extreme physical and mental disabilities, each and every one of us is where we are today
be it poor or wealthy, happy or sad, on the streets or in a condo, in a Mercedes or a rusted-out Pinto
because of the choices we have made during our lives. It's the choices we have made that put us where we are, not the choices others have made for us. — Neal Boortz

A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities. — Joseph Addison

99% of the casualties linked to climate change occur in developing countries. Worst hit are the world's poorest groups. While climate change will increasingly affect wealthy countries, the brunt of the impact is being borne by the poor, whose plight simply receives less attention. — Rajendra K. Pachauri

The real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the3 emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the market economy for the first time. — C. K. Prahalad

None is poor but the mean in mind, the timorous, the weak, and unbelieving; none is wealthy but the affluent in soul, who is satisfied and floweth over. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

You can't be evangelical and associate yourself with Jesus and what he says about the poor and just have no other domestic concerns than tax cuts for wealthy people. — Jim Wallis

They had known that it would happen. Yet they had not prevented it. Their world had been overused, abused, their forests logged, their precious fossil fuels wasted, their rich obscenely wealthy, their poor reduced to beggary. They had been powerful enough to put up the satellites, they had plated the landscape with their roads, crisscrossed it with their machines. And now where were they? — Kerry Greenwood

But artists aren't the only marginalized folks controlling real estate. Think about the colonizing role that wealthy white gay men have played in communities of color; they're often the first group to gentrify poor and working-class neighborhoods. Harlem is a good example. Gays have moved in and driven up rents, as have renegade young white students, who want to be cool and hip. This is colonization, post-colonial-style. After all, the people who are "sent back" to recover the territory are always those who don't mind associating with the colored people! And it's a double bind, because some of these people could be allies. Some gay white men are proactive about racism, even while being entrepreneurial. But in the end, they take spaces, redo them, sell them for a certain amount of money, while the people who have been there are displaced. And in some cases, the people of color who are there are perceived as enemies by white newcomers. — Bell Hooks

We weren't wealthy but we definitely weren't poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd's Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime. — Roger Daltrey

Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you're not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You're basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich. — Robert Reich

The wealthy and powerful become ever more wealthy and more powerful, while the poor and oppressed grow ever more enslaved. — K. Makansi

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government. — Bruce Bartlett

Bringing this all together, the 1980s become and intensely significant point for the purposes of our understanding of what one could consider the degradation of our prison system and our food system in America: We see at that time period a sharp increase in the rates of diet-related disease, the number of incarcerated people, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor. — Erika Camplin

A man may be absolutely poor and dispossessed of everything, and yet be wordly. Another man may be very wealthy and yet severed. Severance means that one's heart must not be attached to the things of this world. It does not mean that a man must dispossess himself of them, or that he must not work and earn or practice his profession, whatever it may be, in the world. It does not mean that he must not put on what he has. If he has a silk garb, let him wear that; and if he has not, but has a suit of cotton goods, let him wear that clean. He must feel the same in both. — Abdu'l- Baha

Amitav Ghosh's multigenerational saga The Glass Palace, set in colonial Burma, India, and Malaya, tells the story of Rajkumar, once a poor Indian boy, who becomes a wealthy teak trader in Burma, and lovely Dolly, former child-maid to the queen and second princess of Burma. — Nancy Pearl

Rich or poor, money rules with an iron fist. — Gary Hopkins

Many a time a poor soul has been put before the dock, to save the neck of the wealthy. — Donald Allen Kirch

We were happy a hundred years ago. We knew that there were exploiters and exploited, wealthy and poor, and we had a perfect idea of how to get rid of injustice; we would expropriate the owners and turn the wealth over to the common good. We expropriated the owners and we created one of the most monstrous and oppressive social systems in world history. And we keep repeating that in principle everything was all right, only some unfortunate accidents slipped in and slightly spoiled the good idea. Now let us start afresh ... — Leszek Kolakowski

What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out. So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. That's why you have more billionaires than ever before. — Ron Paul

The Constitution ... illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law
all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity. — Howard Zinn

Will a guaranteed annual wage kill incentive among the poor? If a man is given a certain amount of security, won't he quit working? Exactly the same contention could be made about the sons of the wealthy who are left large fortunes. Yet the evidence suggests that, given economic freedom, people will generally choose to do that which interests them most. It is up to society to see that these interests are widened and that too requires investment. — Pierre Berton