Harold J. Laski Quotes

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

It's the rich you can terrorize. The poor have nothing to lose.

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.

The man who has half a million of dollars in property... has a much higher interest in the government, than the man who has little or no property.

I think America has dealt with - I mean, this is simplistic, and of course I don't live in America - but the impression I get is that there is not a kind of obligation to dislike those who are better off or be frightened of those who are worse off.

Whenever the very rich hold views at odds with those of the entire population, the federal government tends to do the rich's bidding.

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

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature.

First of all, this whole idea of this one percent versus the 99 percent, it's a false statistic. There's nobody that is wealthy saying, let's go get the people that aren't. First of all, there's no versus. He's creating a false class warfare in a country where there is no class structure.

Many times, people attack the well-to-do people. They see an opportunity.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

Big government inevitably drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government.

The men of middling property and poor men can never be safe in a mixed representation with the men of over-grown property.

If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning.

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, no worse, for a people than another.

There are but two families in the world … The haves and the have-nots.

God help the rich, the poor can look after themselves

In every country, and under every government, particular men may be too rich.

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

In Delhi there was no war other than the usual one -- the war of the rich against the poor.

If all we've got is the dirt poor and the filthy rich, the dirt poor would eat the filthy rich.