Voltaire Quotes

The dainties of the great are the teares of the poore.

In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

I am open-eyed about what poverty does to people.

It's the rich you can terrorize. The poor have nothing to lose.

I've always stood on one fact - that all over the world, there are only two things, the Establishment and the poor people. The poor people are a massive majority and across the world they are exploited in different kinds of ways. The Establishment depends on exploiting raw materials and the poor.

When our economy is not growing, those least able to look after themselves are the first thrown overboard ...

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.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term ...to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

To ruin those who possess something is not to come to the aid of those who possess nothing; it is only to render misery general.

The world no longer permits the stronger to kill the weaker, but it allows the wealthy to oppress the poor. Money is holier than man. Human life is less sacred than property. To save a dollar is regarded as a more necessary virtue than to save a human heart. Society cares more for fortune than for truth.

It’s dangerous to live among poor people, because if they don’t have income, they are coming for you.

All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

The world has grown rich and refined, but chiefly by the efforts of those who themselves continue poor and ignorant.

The state grew fat, but the people grew lean.

The rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another.

All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.

As the condition of America and the world degenerates, it is we who are the weak or the poor or the ignorant who feel it worse.

Oh! God! That bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap!

The devil wipes his breech with poor folks' pride.

One thing that you consistently see everywhere is that the poor and the under-represented are always the ones who are going to suffer the most and get the short end of the stick.

There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery