Peter Singer Quotes

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

It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's still the same billionaires that run the world.

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm not overly alarmist about it, but I do think there are some worrying signs, like the growing accumulation of wealth by a very small proportion of the population, plus elections in the US are much more dominated by money than anywhere else calling itself a democracy.

The relationship between the policy desires of the wealthiest 10 percent of the population and the actual Federal public policy over recent decades often corresponded to a plutocracy rather than a democracy.

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

It's this mingling of the economic and political elite which is really destroying our democracy.

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.

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.

Our family's fortune is growing faster than ever. We're a part of a small number of American families that own most of the country's wealth. But having so much in the hands of so few can't be good for America.

I believe and I say it is true Democratic feeling, that all the measures of the Government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

We have allowed an unholy alliance of government - the new monarchy - and corporate influence - the new aristocracy - to take control of events in a way that would have made our Founders shudder.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

Maybe, just maybe, something is wrong when the greatest part of new money earned in our country goes to the top 1 percent.... There is something profoundly wrong then the millionaires and billionaires are running the politics of our country.... When billionaires are buying elections, that is not democracy.

Americans ... are ruled by the Boss and the Trust.

It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.

Finance capital curtails democratic rights, narrowing the scope of democracy and paving the way for the open and violent dictatorship of fascist rule.

A ruling class has emerged. We no longer have government of, by and for the people but rather by professional legislators.

Equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists… we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already”

When great wealth collects the way it has in the last two decades, it develops an arrogance…. You see it in the development of a survival of the fittest philosophy, one that says markets are more important than democracy.

Free markets were supposed to lead to free societies. Instead, today’s supercharged global economy is eroding the power of the people in democracies around the globe. Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.

The rich are hijacking American democracy.