L. Neil Smith Quotes

It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us.

'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.

Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.

If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.

The Occupy movement has drawn attention to how too many in the 1 percent get to play by their own rules while exploiting the 99 percent.

We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.

Whenever people with money have power over people with less money, you have the potential for exploitation.

Capitalists personally are often the mildest-mannered men that ever shattered a family or drained a workingman of his marrow.

Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?

The strongest bulwark of the capitalistic system is the ignorance of its victims.

One must denounce the economic, financial, and social mechanisms and structures that are manipulated by the rich and powerful for their own benefit at the expense of the poor

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.

All the rivalries of nations have been reduced to this one - a degraded struggle for their share of the spoils of barbarous countries to be used at home for the purpose of increasing the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor.

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money – and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

… the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return

The “natural laws of economics” are in fact tools in the hands of the avaricious and the greedy for keeping down and oppressing the laboring classes.

The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery.

Sadly, the system in this country is rigged in favor of wealthy elites who have purchased tremendous influence in our government.

Poor people are too stupid to know they're just chess pieces in a game.

Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.

Power is every stealing from the many to the few.

Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

The wealthy have never liked to pay for the labor that enriches them. Ever since slavery was eliminated, they have been trying to keep it as close to slavery as they can without violating the slave laws.

It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - 'voluntarily' sell - himself every day and hour to the 'beast of property.'