John Ball Quotes

Our goal is a classless society.

We have been taught by experience the danger of the levelling spirit.

When people are educated, class distinction disappears.

We must be thoroughly democratic and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.

The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization.

Human beings are no longer born to their place in life

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

That we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation. Not Inclosing any part into any particular hand, but all as one man, working together, and feeding together as Sons of one Father, members of one Family; not one Lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals in the Creation; so that our Maker may be glorified in the work of his own hands.

Here, no privileged orders – no factitious distinctions in society – no hereditary nobility – no royal prerogatives exist, to interpose barriers between the people, and to create distinct classifications in society. All men being considered as enjoying an equality of rights, the propriety and necessity of dispensing, without distinction, the blessings of education ….

If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.

The goal of socialism is communism.

Strip the proud nobility of their bloated estates, reduce them to a level with plain republicans, send forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshops or handle the plow, and you will thus humble proud traitors.

I've always felt that, in America, we're all equal. I don't care what you make or what kind of car you drive. You're not better than me.

A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.

We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.

The fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to none.

The intelligent quest is for the free society with equality of opportunity. The quest for equality of result is the path to the widest equality of all: despotism.

Socialism will never substitute one class rule for another …. The aim of Socialism is to do away with rule and exploitation in every form, men becoming free and equal, no masters and servants, but comrades, bothers and sisters.

The social order we have built recognizes no exploitation of man by man. In our country there are no rich people to live at the expense of the workers and peasants. Just as there are no poor people living on the charity of others.

I wanted everyone to be equal. I wanted everyone to be rich. Nobody would oppress anybody. Nobody would look down on anybody. No capitalism. No oppression.

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit, to society, and scattered with equal hand throughout all its conditions.

Keep up the middle class; lop off aristocracy on the one hand, and a rabble at the other; let the middle class ... have the power.