David Potter Quotes

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom.

You need just the right amount of protection for the rich under democracy: too little and the elite will not agree to democracy; too much and the poor will go ahead and have the revolution...

I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilization would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.

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

In politics heaven lies at the feet of the poor masses.

All societies, including societies called democratic, are ruled by a minority.

All power is fast getting into the hands of the very lowest people.

The state is no more than a machine for oppression of one class by another. This is as true of democracy as it is of monarchy.

Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

The question is very simple. Shall the common man be pushed back in the mud, or shall he not? That was the real issue of the Spanish war.

If there is a class war—and there is—it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill. ... it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.

I have a great fear of the atrociousness of proletarian rule.

If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness.

…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 the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

The prince and the peasant will not be equalized by cutting off the prince's head.

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.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.