Ray Bradbury Quotes

There are two distinctive classes of people today, those who have personal computers, and those who have several thousand extra dollars apiece.

I think technology is spreading, and I think one's experience of technology is going to relate increasingly to class - not so much to country.

A family living at the poverty level is unlikely to be able to afford a computer at home. Even with a computer, access to the Internet is another significant expense. A child might borrow a book from a public library; but it is not possible to take a computer home.

Here in Havana where families make about $20 a month, fewer than 5 percent have Internet in their homes, they are prepared. But it's hard to predict how sweeping this change will be, if the people of Cuba are even ready for it.

I think in some ways it would make more sense to have as a poverty level a relative concept and say, the level of poverty is that level of income or that level of consumption below which 10 percent of the people now are.

You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.

The world isn't set up equally, and the first billion people using Facebook have way more money than the rest of the world combined.

My roots were pretty far removed from high income. It's interesting to be back there at the level of income I have now, at this stage in my life.

In all conditions of life a poor man is a near neighbor to an honest one, and a rich man is as little removed from a knave.

If you sell to the rich, you will become poor. If you sell to the poor, you can become rich. It is easier to get one peso from a million poor people than to get one million from one rich person.

The best way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downward, as poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income.

People say it's hard at the top, but it's even harder at the bottom.

As I started getting older and started to learn about the world, my friends would tell me about video games and dirt bikes and stuff, and I'd be like, "Oh, I got none of that." I started asking questions, like, "Why we can't get this stuff?" And it was like, "Well, we work hard to make sure da da da..."

I didn't love school because I wanted to disguise that I was poorer than everybody else. So when I was a teen I reached out in a wrong way. I started to be a mugger, to rob people in the streets, just to supply for my needs.

Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people.

If you wanna maintain 20 percent of the world's income with 4 percent of the world's people, you gotta first of all have more shared prosperity and shared growth.

Poor people choose now. Rich people choose balance.

I've lived a lot in communist countries and they're intensely interested in money. I think they are more interested in money than capitalists are. They're the most materialistic people in the world. What they're actually living for is material things. The irony of that is that in communist countries there isn't anything to buy.

...poor people are just as human as anyone else. They have just as much potential as anyone.

In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.

I agree with people who say we want more income equality; we want more consumer protection; and we want sounder banks. I agree with all that.

Millionaires are just as patriotic as poor people. The very wealthy are just as noble and patriotic as the middle class. But nothing has been asked of them in this horrendous recession. And it's time we just ask.

It is among the less privileged groups relatively new to leisure and consumption that the zest for possessions retains something of its pristine energy.

It's easy to kind of say it's the elite that's putting you down. Well, it wasn't really the elite, technology will do that.

We're very privileged as Americans - it's easy to forget about the rest of the world and to think that your problems are the most important problems. Even poor people in America live better than poor people most everywhere else.