Peter Shaffer Quotes

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

Europe is filled with the very elements of social combustion.

All at present is quiet in Paris. There are Socialist risings in many parts of the country, but all these will do the President [coup leader Louis Napoleon] good, and strengthen his hands, for even the people who have been treated with indignity will pardon him if their châteaux are saved from an infuriated and brutal peasantry.

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.

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

Citizens, we have reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, will successively devour all its children, and only produce despotism and the calamities which accompany it.

Europe is a breeding ground for spontaneous class hatred to be channeled by a skillful agitator.

The Netherlands have become a sick country, I have a message for the judges who convicted me: You have restricted the freedom of speech of millions of Dutch and hence convicted everyone. No one trusts you anymore.

When I see the mostly young people of Occupy Wall Street - a mixture of the bored, the nihilistic, the seekers of excitement, the left-wing true believers, the confused idealists and those hoping to engage in violence - railing against the rich capitalists on Wall Street, I get worried. Because the hatred they express toward the rich is similar to that expressed against the rich by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Of course, these people are not comparable to those killers. But class hatred must lead to bad things. That is why President Obama is playing with fire with his attacks on the rich.

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I write it in a book for children. Children still haven't closed themselves off with fear of the unknown, fear of revolution, or the scramble for security. They are still familiar with the inborn vocabulary of myth

From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.

As the haves and have-nots split further and further apart, destabilization ultimately leads to revolution, not evolution. If we're playing the evolution vs. revolution game, we are closer to revolution than we are to evolution in my concept.

Destabilization and turmoil,[Steven] Lerner hopes, will also crash the stock market, isolating the banking class and allowing for a transfer of power.

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

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

The workmen's revolution, with the terrors of destruction and murder, not only threatens us, but we have already been living upon its verge during the last thirty years, and it is only by various cunning devices that we have been postponing the crisis. The hatred and contempt of the oppressed people are increasing, and the physical and moral strength of the richer classes are decreasing: the deceit which supports all this is wearing out, and the rich classes have nothing wherewith to comfort themselves.

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

The People's democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. For it is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary. The entire history of revolution proves that without the leadership of the working class revolution fails and that with the leadership of the working class revolution triumphs.

In fact, for the majority of the population, wages and incomes have stagnated and conditions have gotten worse. So they are asking, "what did I do wrong?" And the answer that the talk show host is giving them is convincing, in it's internal logic. It's saying, "what's wrong is the rich liberals own everything, run everything, they don't care about you; therefore, distrust them" and so on.

There is no alternative to class struggle.

If we become tow people-the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear of the other-then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come.

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

The class war is over.

Socially, I never belonged to any class, rich or poor. To the rich I was poor, and to the poor I was poor pretending to be like the rich.

I think that in the future, as more and more money and wealth goes to the 1 per cent, it's going to polarize into the people who are for and anti-freedom. It's not that they'll have a left and a right wing thing, it's going to be a freedom and anti-freedom polarization, I think.