Economist Quotes

An issue between a people and a class

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

Liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

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.

He that despises his neighbor's happiness because he wears a worsted cap or a leather apron, he that struts immeasurably above the lower size of the people, and pretends to adjust the rights of the men by the distinctions of fortune

The USA was founded in the name of democracy, equality and individual freedom, but is failing to deliver the fundamental promise of protecting rights for all.

At times those who won, 51 percent of the population claim the right to ride roughshod over the other 49 percent.

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

If you have maximum liberty then the strong can destroy the weak, and if you have absolute equality, you cannot have absolute liberty …. Total liberty can be dreadful, total equality can be equally frightful.

Man has set man against man, Washed against unwashed.

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

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.

Liberty and equality are not only destructive to the morals, but to the happiness of society.

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

…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.

Social injustice still needs to be denounced and fought. [In the post-communist era.]

Resentment — that feeling when the modern promise of equality collides with massive disparities of power, education, status and property ownership.

Discrimination will impair democracy.

America stands for freedom, liberty and justice for all. And it's not happening for all right now.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

I grew up with injustice and could do nothing about it. But once in America, I had freedom of choice.

I don't think we live in a particularly equal society.