Edmund Burke Quotes

An issue between a people and a class

As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.

Revolutions break out when opposite parties, the rich and the poor, are equally balanced, and there is little or nothing between them.

The Privileged and the People form Two Nations.

There was no pity take of the poor people, who wrought never no manner of treason, yet they bought it dearer than the great personages, such as had done the evil and trespass

Despite the advances in technology and communications that link us more closely than ever before, there remains the reality of division at so many levels in our world. We see these divides between rich and poor, between women and men, between different religions or ethnic groups, between citizens and migrants. We know as well that these divides are at the core of so many of today's conflicts.

…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.

…in every city are found two diverse humors, and this arises from the fact that the common people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the powerful men desire to command and oppress the people..

As recognized since ancient times, the coexistence of very rich and very poor leads to two possibilities, neither a happy one. The rich can rule alone, disenfranchising or even enslaving the poor, or the poor can rise up and confiscate the wealth of the rich.

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

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

Without alienation, there can be no politics.

Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose; while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose, especially their lives.

Most of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and have nots.

We have two American flags always; one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it, it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it, it means danger, revolution.

The "have nots" outnumber the "haves." No wonder the ruling class of every country grows more and more alarmed.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

We are still a nation deeply divided by race and class.

In the beginning, all men were alike and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are two kinds of men, the master and the slave. But there are more of us than there are of you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in mankind belongs to us.

The absolutists of contract are the real parents of revolution.

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.

The extremes of society are being driven further and further apart.

At the moment we have a ruling class that has one law and the people the other.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.