Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

Men who cannot read are the mercy of a few men who are interested in self more than in good government. The country is the sufferer; for the effect of one ballot is felt to the utmost extremity of the body politic; it touches every industry and trade, it accelerates or retards the wheels of commerce, and fills the avenues of trade with life and general activity such as is found in no other country.

It has been the purpose of the ruling class, apparently, to build new barriers between themselves and the common people, rather than tear away any of those already existing. I think no one can understand the actual condition of the mass of whites in Georgia and the Carolinas, except by some daily contact with them. The injustice done to three fourths of them was hardly less than that done to all the blacks.... Nine of every ten white men in South Carolina had almost as little to do with even State affairs as the negroes had.

As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed.

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us.

A poor man is like a foreigner in his own country.

These political movements flourish on the margins of Turkish society because of poverty and because of the people's feeling that they are not being represented.

It was a slow understanding that my kidnappers really are a product of their environment.

Something is clearly wrong with Kansas and the rest of Middle America when it comes to letting economic self-interest guide their voting.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

Everybody needs history but the people who need it most are poor folks - people without resources or options.

This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside.

That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.

Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.

If you are a representative, and poor people don’t vote, you’re not going to pay particular attention to the needs of the poor.

Just because you are poor and have no voice does not mean that you don’t deserve police protection.

The poor don't vote all the time.

The real threat to the democracy is the half a nation in poverty.

We are at great risk in our democracy for failing to understand the great depths of poverty.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Disenfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slaver's scars, I am the Red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same ole stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

Voting rights and free speech are of little value to those with neither the education nor economic clout to make them meaningful.

I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting. The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man’s hands.

Representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors [voters] are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them

One-fourth of the children in this country are poor—and they don't vote.