Woody Guthrie Quotes

If you've got unemployment, low pay, that was just too bad. But that was the system. That was the sort of economy and philosophy against which I was fighting in the 1930s.

It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few who make up the employing class have all the good things of life.

I think the defining issue of our time is: Does the economic, social, and political system work for the middle class?

Since Mill, in 1848, wrote his chapter on the future of the working classes, the question of the distribution of wealth has be-come of still greater importance. We cannot look round on the political phenomena of to-day without seeing that this question is at the root of them. We see the perplexity in which men stand, and the divisions springing up in our great political parties, because of the uncertainty of politicians how to grapple with it.

The people who talk about the middle class aren't upholding their interests in the legislature.

I was one of the poorest people in America.

The working class who toil everyday to pay their rent and put food on their families' tables are tired of being lectured by the fat cats in Washington and Brussels who preach what we need and when we need it.

I would say that many of the characters in my stories do not live in true poverty - they are not out on the street; they are not wondering if there will be anything to eat in the next week. They are people who are at the lower echelons of the economic strata.

I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike. I know that because I don't come from a wealthy background.

You destroy the initiative of the working people if they don't feel they have a fighting chance to be a part of the American Dream.

You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'

While there's capitalism, there'll be socialism, because there is always a response to injustice.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

For people who are at the bottom economically, the world is becoming a harder and harder place. And yet the incentives to become rich are so great because enormous amounts of wealth are being accumulated. And so those two things, that carrot and stick, are beating people along this trajectory of trying desperately to move up in the world.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.

It’s no surprise that a global economy creates a global class conflict…. All markets create classes and class conflicts.

When socialism comes into power, the Roman Church will advocate socialism with the same vigor [with which] it is now favoring feudalism and slavery.

Don't talk to me about socialism. What we have, we hold.

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.

… that veiled sister of communism – legalistic socialism

Every opponent to socialism should consciously investigate if he, when he lived in hopeless poverty and humiliation, also would be an opponent to socialism

In the society of to-day the means of production are a monopoly of the capitalistic class; the dependence of the working classes which results from this is the cause of misery and of servitude in all its forms.

If class warfare isn’t the richest of the rich fighting tooth and nail against unions and any tax increases while record numbers of people lose their homes, what is?