Tim Ryan Quotes

The second truism that we must understand is that poverty does not create our social problems, our social problems create our poverty.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Deep persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation’s promise …. All of us are diminished when any are hopeless.

The real threat to the democracy is the half a nation in poverty.

You can make too much of inequality because there is always so much of it.

I will not concede for a moment that old privileges should not dwindle. They cannot dwindle fast enough.

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

The Reagan program is not working because the program is not fair - and, just as important, because the people themselves know it is not fair.

No man-made system is perfect, and the system of oppression is no exception. It is subject to fatigue, to cracks, which you are the likelier to discover the longer your term.

I think what we forget is that everybody loses when we keep unnecessary privilege. The cost to society overall is much greater.

There are people getting screwed in our country every single second, minute, hour of the day. And if by our work, we can decrease that number, we'll make a difference; we'll be doing our jobs.

Year after year, politicians have drafted huge piles of legislation on the assumption that most people are not good. And we know the consequences of that policy: inequality, loneliness and mistrust.

I think that there always have been and always will be at least two Americas - the poor America, the second America, tends to be in the shadows. Sometimes it's an America of people in a ghetto of color, sometimes it's an economic ghetto, but definitely there is a parallel America which people in the dominant America prefer to ignore if they can.

I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

Often, those with the most to lose as a result of a poor policy move are the most vulnerable and most marginalized. Those folks need a voice, and I will endeavor to be that voice.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

We know that social exclusion is closely tied to the new economic world order, globalized, with free and open markets, which isn't bringing prosperity or social justice to all.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

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

Keeping people on the margins of cultural, social and political life constitutes in many nations one of the most glaring injustices of our time.