Graca Machel Quotes

The rich have all the speech they want; the poor have lockjaw.

It’s dangerous to live among poor people, because if they don’t have income, they are coming for you.

… the struggling masses

At the end of the day, we have an economy that works for the rich by cheating the poor, and unequal schools are the result of that, not the cause.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.

It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.

The most dreaded of all wars, the war of the poor against the rich … will come and come with all its horrors.

Individuals and families whose standards of living are shockingly low quite naturally feel that they have nothing to lose by championing Communism.

Poor whites have been pitted against poor blacks to assuage the conscience of the affluent.

A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

New York Times, despite its liberal reputation, has been against the poor people of this earth.

If, in a country, the wealth is concentrated in the hands of only the few, it cannot witness harmony and stability.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

…of all the causes of seditions and changes in the Republic, there is none greater than the excessive wealth of a few subjects, and the extreme poverty of the majority.

When the economy prospers, but ordinary people do not, it is only a matter of time before there is a social explosion.

Inequality is bad for everyone, not just the middle class and the poor.

I come from the poor people, and I have been here working my whole stinkin' career for people who don't have a chance, and I really resent anybody that says I'm doing it for the rich. Give me a break.

The rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another.

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.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

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

Half the world does not know how the other half lives.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.