Benjamin R. Barber Quotes

The dollar votes more times than the man.

I'm advocating that American citizens interested in democracy should stay out of chain stores.

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.

The biggest lie of all is that capitalism is democracy. We have no way of understanding democracy outside of the market, just as we have no understanding of how to understand freedom outside of market values.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

Today's average American is more apt to rebel against a tennis shoe not coming in the right color than against the slow erosion of our democratic freedom.

We have a great nation to help govern. We who are citizens of this great republic are favored children, yet we are all the time complaining; but that is one of the inalienable privileges of an American to complain about his neighbor and government-always crying for a change. But, with all of its faults, this is the best government for man on the face of the earth

What were we told to do? Get back on those airplanes. Shop in the malls. The trouble was that the only role they had for us was as consumers—not as citizens.

To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

Education, then, as universally diffused as the elements of God, is the life-blood of our body politic. The intelligence of the people is the one great fact of our civilization and our prosperity, — it is the beating heart of our age and of our land. It is education alone which makes equality possible without anarchy, and liberty without license.

I feel that a period of service to the nation would be good for all of us, though I hope it will not be a purely military period. I have a great appreciation for the need for discipline and basic training in military methods, but above all, I believe we must develop the realization of every individual's responsibility in a democracy for his government. To me any period of training should stress this very clearly and should include service to the community. I believe both boys and girls should receive such training.

It's said that history inevitably marches toward democracy, but it only leaves the possibility of democracy, and the constant threat that it would be eroded by big money.

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.

The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.

Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

Please, please, stop referring to yourselves as 'consumers.' OK? Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings.

The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer.

Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

However much we might deplore the profit motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants i-Pods we would probably be better off than if they wanted class revolution.

Obviously we're a consumer nation and you have the power to influence these big corporations who are running the world right now through what you chose to, or not to, purchase.