David Harvey Quotes

I look at my people, and I look at those who control them - the political elite. And the sad thing is that the elites are just not interested in the welfare of the people.

A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production.

Chile is still at the whim of powerful, traditional elites who sit as a higher societal authority than the elected government.

For thousands of years, the natural tendency of elites everywhere has been to monopolize power rather than restrain it.

When you go back and look at the history of anything, it’s always the records of the elite that survive.

The big wars of the 20th Century, like the two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, were all wars about elite control.

The powerful don't make revolutions

The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.

The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show.

The real bias of the media is not to the left or to the right, but to the thin strata of economic elites at the top of our society.

You really have to go searching desperately to find any contemporary examples of good, old-fashioned runaway inflation.

For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.

One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs.

The powerful have no monopoly on greed, hatred, fear, or ignorance.

Wealth aggregates and becomes political power. Simple as that. ‘Corporation’ is just the most recent name for it.

And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?

... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.

To whom one reports is a unit of measure. It measures the exact distance between the player and the center of power. It is the closest we can get to a calibrated answer to the question 'How big am I?' More than the size of an executive's office or even his title, which no one remembers anyway, the fewer people between the player and a 'yes,' the more powerful he is.

It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention.

I'm a major feminist. There's a real politic in life, where I've been in rooms where real decisions are made, and it's a lot of powerful white men. There are women in those rooms, but not as many as there should be.

Experience assures us, that the efficacy of the provision has been greatly over-rated; and that some more adequate defense is indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more powerful members of the government.

The economy is in tatters; your job is in trouble - if you still have a job. And you know what? I've been saying it for years.

The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.

These people—the employed, the somewhat privileged—are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.

The most powerful men are not public men: a public man is responsible, and a responsible man is a slave. It is private life that governs the world.