Newt Gingrich Quotes

Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?

I mean, you just go down the line, and with any of these issues, it's about rich people staying rich. And using poverty as a weapon against people. That's what we see every day. And I'm not an economist, so I can't speak to the nuances of it, but just common sense tells me the whole thing is corrupt.

I just don't understand, if they see numbers [of CEO salaries]that represent people, how they can somehow skirt around that and morally justify taking or ruining those lives and leaving them with nothing. That, to me, is violent crime. It's certainly more violent than selling grams of pot to other adults.

The economic system that the United States has is an evil empire. It's an economic system that's not fair, not just, and it's not democratic. And it will fall just like communism fell. The richest 1 percent now own 50 percent of the wealth. It didn't use to be that way. The average CEO 20 years ago made 20 times as much as the average employee. Now they make 212 times as much.

Stockholders are used to a certain kind of global capitalism. This version is very hard on the environment and very hard on people below a certain fiscal level. It is a calculated, systematic weakening of people. Many labour, a few benefit. Try talking about cleaning up the place with these people. The hostility is incredible.

Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash.

The rules of the global economy are rigged against those who have to work to earn a living and in favour of multinational corporations and the ultra-rich.

We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer.

When you have mega-corporations that have record profits, but they don't want to share even a little bit of that with their workers, we are actually putting our communities at peril.

When you look at the Koch brothers, who make three million dollars an hour on their dividends alone, you begin to get a sense of what we're talking about. The estimates now are that the upper 1% control something like 40% of all wealth. Eighty families in the world control as much as half the world's population. These figures are being produced every day. We need to put a human face to these figures. We need to make clear that something is being taken from the vast majority of people, and is causing an enormous amount of suffering.

The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

The wealthy have installed their slaves in the highest spheres of the state. The banks are privately owned. They are concerned solely with profits. They have no interest in the common good.

If the machinery for distribution in the present economic system of the world is incapable of properly distributing the productive wealth of nations, then that system is false and must be altered.

The economy is not governed with the bottom half in mind.

Cory Booker became a millionaire because this is how the economy works for people of his class: Rich people give other rich people money to do nothing, simply because they 'deserve' it.

But he like my mother, had certainly come to know that those who work the most do not make the most money. It was the fault of the rich, it seemed, but just how he did not know.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

I don't know how anyone could vote Republican. It's so obvious that their only interest is keeping the rich rich.

The Occupy movement has drawn attention to how too many in the 1 percent get to play by their own rules while exploiting the 99 percent.

Capitalism is like the law of the jungle with a few rules. There isn't another system that works for our society but left unchecked, capitalism can have a dehumanising effect.

I believe that the only people who really, truly benefit from any of the policies of Republicans are the wealthy. I'm in that 1 percent tax bracket, but I'm not a man of wealth.

You will notice that the Occupy Wall Street crowds - and the progressives who support them - focus on bringing the wealthy down to earth rather than lifting the 99 percent. They have a nearly religious belief that too much wealth is fundamentally immoral and unhealthy for society.

I feel that India lacks a level of philanthropy that is proportional to the wealth that is here, particularly among the top 5,000 industrialists and entrepreneurs.