Geezer Butler Quotes

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

It means that, in fact, it's - whether fascist is the right word I don't know - more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.

We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.

It is property which has made tyrants and not tyrants property.

America’s super-elite has been particularly effective at using the tools of a political democracy to protect its minority privilege.

Our democracies are increasingly captured by a ruling class that seeks to perpetuate its privileges.

It's really difficult for mainstream - let's say, cable outlets - to talk about things like income inequality, wealth inequality when the advertisers that are funding their shows are the same corporations that want to ensure that the same system continues.

It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.

Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.

America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.

In large commercial cities, the money power is, I fear irresistible. It is not by open corruption that it always, or even most generally, operates.

The political system is not for the people. The people are secondary to the economy. It's about what generates money, not about what benefits the people.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.

When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims.

The Tory approach depended on benefits trickling down from a process that inevitably strengthened the already strong.

Andrew Mellon [Treasury Secretary and multi-millionaire] is today the real President of the United States. Calvin Coolidge is merely the man who occupies the White House.

As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.

The so-called oligarchs have always had less influence than conventional wisdom attributed to them.

High levels of economic inequality lead to imbalances in political power, as those at the top use their economic weight to shape our politics in ways that give them more economic power.

Money doesn't just buy a nice car; it also buys better education or healthcare. Increasingly, it can buy impunity from justice, a pliant media, favorable laws, business advantage, and even elections. This, in turn, perpetuates the policies that allow a tiny elite to accumulate ever more wealth at the expense of the majority.

Globalism is a scheme for impoverishing First World labor and taking power and influence from the hands of the many and putting them in the hands of the few.