Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

Good economic theory must give the people the chance to use their talents to build their own lives. We must get away from the traditional route where the rich will do the business and the poor will depend on private or public charity.

It's fair to say that, for much of my lifetime, New Zealand certainly was a property-owning democracy and working people, ordinary people, had assets.

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth.

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.

Yes, in socialism the rich will be poorer - but the poor will also be poorer. People will lose interest in really working hard and creating jobs.

Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth.

For a free country to continue thriving, there have to be regular reforms, because any society, any economy that stays in place, you're going to see repeated attempts to exploit the openings for twisting policy to the advantage of those who already have wealth and power.

Over time, my students have gotten richer and more educated.

A thriving middle class is a necessary precondition for a free representative government.

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

In the States everyone aspires to be middle class. It's so engrained into the American psyche: As long as you work hard you're going to be rich some day. The history of Britain is that if you're born working class, you're going to stay there, although that is changing.

In the best days of our republic Americans were fiercely proud of the fact that rich and poor met on such equal terms in so many ways, and without the slightest trace of hostility.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

The ability to take advantage of freedom and democracy is proportional to the size of your bank account.

The U. S. Senate is ... one place in the world that allows a poor boy to live as though he were a millionaire.

The poor generally follow behavior patterns established by the rich.

Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave.

Democracy really depends not only on not just having a middle class but having wealth distributed relatively evenly across the society so that people buy into the legitimacy of the system

The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

Huge inequality gaps in a democratic society will tend to erode the respect for and security of doctrines of private property. The large majority must either own property or have reasonable prospects of attaining property if they are to support and maintain private property laws and traditions.

Most Americans seem to be stuck in the economic strata to which they were born.

By the 1980s divorce declined among the more educated portions of the populace, while rates among the less educated continued to rise… the more educated and more well-to-do were more likely to wed. Given the family role as an incubator of human capital, such trends have had important spillover effects on inequality.

Present day American capitalism—for all our misgivings about it—at least leaves room for free institutions to flower and survive.

… perceptions of poverty have gone up because there’s been rising inequality.

One thing that is clearly not maximized by free markets is equality. I am talking not about that pale substitute for equality known as equality of opportunity but about equality itself.