Polybius Quotes

As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.

I've always stood on one fact - that all over the world, there are only two things, the Establishment and the poor people. The poor people are a massive majority and across the world they are exploited in different kinds of ways. The Establishment depends on exploiting raw materials and the poor.

To ruin those who possess something is not to come to the aid of those who possess nothing; it is only to render misery general.

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.

The world no longer permits the stronger to kill the weaker, but it allows the wealthy to oppress the poor. Money is holier than man. Human life is less sacred than property. To save a dollar is regarded as a more necessary virtue than to save a human heart. Society cares more for fortune than for truth.

In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

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.'

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.

The origin of all revolutions and corruption, and the spur and source of all base morals are just two sayings: The First Saying: 'So long as I'm full, what is it to me if others die of hunger?' The Second Saying: 'You suffer hardship so that I can live in ease; you work so that I can eat.'

It's the rich you can terrorize. The poor have nothing to lose.

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

I understand working-class culture, tribalism and the ethos of violence, so I make films about these things.

It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.... My prison-house is but an intensified replica of the world beyond, the larger prison locked with the levers of Greed, guarded by the spawn of Hunger.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder When hunger ruled. I came among men in a time of uprising And I revolted with them.

It is assumed that the daughters of the poor are for the use of the rich. They assume that we’re their property.

The Privileged and the People form Two Nations.

All down history, nine-tenths of mankind have been grinding corn for the remaining one-tenth, been paid with the husks, and bidden to thank God they had the husks.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

A city in which the nobles obtain their desire, is nothing else but a company of masters and slaves ordered to the satisfaction of the avarice and dishonest wishes of the ruling class.

It’s dangerous to live among poor people, because if they don’t have income, they are coming for you.

… in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up