Eliot Engel Quotes

Every country has rich people. But only a few places have achieved a vibrant and stable middle class. And in the history of the world, none has been more vibrant and more stable than the American middle class.

I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.

Americans have historically been more willing than Europeans to tolerate high inequality levels if accompanied by strong economic growth and a healthy middle class.

The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.

I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way.

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

What makes this country different is that we have a great middle class.

You cannot have a strong, resilient economy unless you have a strong resilient middle class.

Democracy really depends not only on not just having a middle class but having wealth distributed relatively evenly across the society so that people buy into the legitimacy of the system

In both Russia and the U.S., there are a very small number of very, very rich people, and then there are a lot of people who don't have anything. The less inequality you have in a society, the more social peace you have. It's kind of a no-brainer.

I know why we're strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it's because there's always been a growing middle class.

There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.

We need policies that will benefit the middle class because you will not have a strong society without a strong middle class, fundamentally.

The middle has not enough class that I think about the middle class.

Look, there is a sort of old view about class which is a very simplistic view that we have got the working class, the middle class and the upper class, I think it is more complicated than that.

A strong, educated middle class is what made America the greatest country in the world.

I am hard-core middle class.

No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.

Ten years ago I said, you know, my goal is to be able to get food on the table. What I'm trying to say by that is trying to create a vibrant, capable and effective middle class. The quicker and stronger that we can be able to do this, the easier it is for political reform to move forward.

Americans are falling out of the middle class, not into it. And they deserve relief. I absolute support extending the Bush tax cuts for those who work the hardest and invest the most in our economy - the real drivers of American growth, the middle class.

We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too.

The middle class, in the white population, encompasses a wide swath.

Without better economic opportunity, you can't have better public security and vice versa.

America's real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.

If we're not going to tax the rich anymore, we're going to create class warfare.