Ram Dass Quotes

Revolutions break out when opposite parties, the rich and the poor, are equally balanced, and there is little or nothing between them.

This country's going to have a revolution if something doesn't happen the haves and have - nots.

We have two American flags always; one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it, it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it, it means danger, revolution.

There are precedents for what happens when societies allow the divide between rich and poor to get so huge that it stops being funny and starts becoming a sick, blood-boiling joke. If you had a Tardis, you could go back to 1917 and ask the Russian royal family how it was all going.

If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.

If you have extremes of haves and have-nots where the gap keeps growing, the have-nots group together and create social disorder, as they can't see a way out of their situation.

To judge from all Communist papers, magazines and brochures, and from all public assemblies, one might even surmise that a revolt of the poor peasants in Western Europe might break out at any moment!

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

I fear that some day or another we shall have in Europe a total upsetting of social order, which will drive all wise and experienced men to America.

The "have nots" outnumber the "haves." No wonder the ruling class of every country grows more and more alarmed.

History shows that when you have continuing income inequality it is an invitation to class conflict.

The position of what is generally called great people has of late become extremely difficult. They are more attacked and calumniated, and judged with less indulgence than private individuals. What they have lost in this way, they have not by any means regained in any other. Ever since the revolution of 1790 they are much less secure than they used to be, and the transition from sovereign power to absolute want has been as frequent as sudden.

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.

[On The Hunger Games success]: "It hit on the zeitgeist of the disparity b/w the haves and have nots.

Social change rarely comes about through the efforts of the disenfranchised. The middle class creates social revolutions.

Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

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.

Occupy Wall Street was a disorganized movement without a clear focus and power base - essential in any successful revolution - but the message was clear: the divisions between those who are fortunate enough to enjoy city living as opposed to those who find it unbearable are too wide.

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

... the problem isn't that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France, before the revolution. And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won't last.

The French revolution was… to terminate the strife of kings among themselves, and to commence that between kings and people…. The princes of Europe, who had hitherto had no enemies but themselves, viewed it in the light of a common foe.

In the modern world, it is not the poor and the oppressed who have led the great revolutions and/or carried out the worst deeds of violence; rather, it is militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society.

Agitators are a set of interfering meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.

Revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a schoolboy’s barring out.