Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

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

The Privileged and the People form Two Nations.

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.

To be concerned about inequality is not engaging in class warfare.

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

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

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

The middle class is always a firm champion of equality when it concerns a class above it; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it.

Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit, to society, and scattered with equal hand throughout all its conditions.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of the half of society over which the other half has power—from the exercises of the right of the strongest.

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

The ignorance of the working class and the superior intelligence of the privileged class are superstitions fostered by ... universities and churches, and by all the centers of privilege.

…to make a commonwealth is to divide it into parties, which setteth them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality, and the other to attain their equality.

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things.

Of the 1 Percent. By the 1 Percent. For the 1 Percent.

Inequality [is] a social control mechanism supported by financial interests’ belief in the desirability of oligarchy.

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

In 'A Hijacking,' the characters are low-status people.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.