Felix Rohatyn Quotes

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

India has political freedom but it does not have economic freedom.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

If you have more rich people and more poor people and fewer people in the middle, what you lose is democracy.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

We can have a democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

Wherever democracy has prevailed, the power of the State has been used in some form or other to plunder the well-to-do classes for the benefit of the poor.

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life.

Nobody talks about the poor. Everybody talks about the middle class and just kinda want to ignore that the poor exist. And you cannot ignore that they exist if you want to help them.

Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery.

Governance should be designed as an equalizer. Democrats are more inclined towards working families and those who are struggling for a better life.

Economic issues are a subset of social justice. Social justice is unimaginable without economic justice. Isn't that obvious?

Economic growth doesn't mean anything if it leaves people out.

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.

I don't mind the rich getting richer, but the poor shouldn't be getting poorer, and there should be more people moving into the middle class.

If you get so unequal that people believe they don't have a chance, that the field isn't level for them and their children, that puts democracy at risk.

I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilization would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.

We are undemocratic, then, in our religion, as is proved by our efforts to “raise” the poor.

The best social programs we've had in this country are those that have united the middle class and the poor.

A New Dealer regrets poverty and deplores the fact that it is necessary for society to slough off its misfits as an individual sheds his impurities and his diseases. But New Dealers believe that human want and human distress should be prevented or at least ameliorated.

For the good of Spain, I should like there to be rather fewer rich people and rather fewer poor.

Economic democracy and political democracy are like two legs of a person. They must go side by side…. Once people know about their rights and claim their rights, nothing is going to stop them.

The tensions between order and liberty, between opportunity and social justice will always be there, but that’s freedom.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.