Oscar Niemeyer Quotes

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.

We cannot rebuild the American Dream here at home by catering to the voices of the privileged and powerful.

The reversion of American society to a nation of the superrich and the rest... is straining the country in ways that go way beyond economics.

I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor...I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

In America, the poor have been invisibilised, because obviously this model of success that has been held out to the world must not show the poor, it must not show the condition of black people. It can only the successful ones, basketball players, musicians, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. But I think the time will come when the Occupy movement will have to somehow formulate something more than just anger.

We live increasingly in a world of haves and have-nots, of gated communities next to ghettos, of extreme poverty and unbelievable riches. Some enjoy rights that are completely denied to others. Relative inequalities are exploding, and the world's poorest, despite all the advances of globalisation, may even be getting poorer.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It's not politically viable; it's not morally right; it's just not going to happen.

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.

The thing about Occupy is that the sentiment the movement embodies is timeless: Don't be greedy, share.

I started out young and idealistic, and it was all about social justice and fair distribution of resources. I didn't understand why everybody couldn't be equally prosperous.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.

Income inequality is the central problem all the way across the world.

Inequality of income is bad for everyone, not just the poor and the middle class.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country.

I'm not interested in defending the position of those who already have money, power and privilege.

We always keep saying, 'We're the best, we're the best.' Other countries offer healthcare for their people. We don't, so how are we the best there? We've got poverty all over the place, and it's the haves and the have-nots, so how are we the best there?

'Redistributing the wealth' - that phrase gets used so much that you almost get numb to it.

Rising inequality is not a law of nature - it's not even a law of economics. It is a consequence of political and economic arrangements, and those arrangements can be changed.

I think, unfortunately, we've always lived in a world of massive inequality: inequality between the haves and the have-nots, inequality between men and women that not only exists temporally but geographically as well.

if they take half the buildings that they use to praise god and give it to the motherfuckers who need god we'd be 'aight

Tough love is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.

We [Americans] have to get beyond the greed-run-amok. We have to get beyond indifference to the poor and working people. We have to get beyond polarized politics.

I would be a president for all of the people, African- Americans, the inner cities. Devastating what's happening to our inner cities. She's been talking about it for years. As usual, she talks about it, nothing happens. She doesn't get it done.

There are some who ask us to believe that if we want the best of times for ourselves, the fit and the fortunate, then we'll just have to learn to live with the worst of times for millions of other Americans - that we're doomed to be a nation of the lucky and the left-out. I don't believe it. My mother didn't believe it. Your ancestors didn't believe it. And I don't think you should believe it.