Isaac Asimov Quotes

Political evils must be sorely felt before they can be removed.

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

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

If there is a class war—and there is—it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill. ... it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.

The First Law of Class Warfare: Once inequalities develop, the upper classes can, with relative ease, drastically reduce the probability of success for any equalizing challenges to the system.

The prince and the peasant will not be equalized by cutting off the prince's head.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving.

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.

Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

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

Peace to the shacks! War on the palaces!

In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.

Indeed, the existence of class, of social hierarchy, is as old as man himself. It prevails in the jungle where strength determines hierarchy; among men, it has also been savagely the same, whereby rulers vested with power through personal combat, or through lineal heritage as in the case of royalty, ravage their subjects.

If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

Social inequality … divides society into two classes -- the wage-slaves and the grabbers of capital

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

Most of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and have nots.

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.