George Gilder Quotes

We have a new class in this country: the deserving rich. ... The deserving rich do nice things for each other. Comforting the unafflicted is something that comes naturally to them.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

For the Left, affluence is won, not earned.

Economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege

Whatever tends to preserve the wealth of the wealthy is conservatism, and whatever favors anything else, no matter what, they call socialism.

Every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add… artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.

One big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent wants it that way.

The wealthy have a responsibility to invest in addressing inequality. This is especially true when constraints on others are so great.

To be concerned about inequality is not engaging in class warfare.

The greatest issue before the people—the question of special privilege and unequal distribution of wealth.

In Brazil, a poor man goes to jail when he steals. When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.

As we celebrate a culture of giving, however, we must also sharpen the question of how extreme wealth generation happens in the first place. And we must recognize that just societies cannot be realized merely by the willful distribution of surplus wealth.

There's always been a nasty strain of class prejudice ingrained in the condemnation of football's 'undeserving rich,' as if the working class is uniquely susceptible to being corrupted by money, and as if they deserve their wealth less than those born to it.

Feed the poor and get rich or feed the rich and get poor.

Justice waits upon the great, Interest holds the scale, and Riches turns the balance.

It's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it.

It's easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.

The interesting thing about class warfare is that it's only class warfare if it's up, not down. If you talk about welfare cheats or something, that's not class warfare because it's down; you have to talk about rich people before it's class warfare.

Economic stimulation that works through the increased outlays to the affluent has, inevitably, an aspect of soundness and sanity that is lacking in expenditure on behalf of the undeserving poor.

When the Englishman speaks of national wealth he means the number of millionaires in the country.

Distance, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs and keep.

Hear me people: We have now to deal with another race - small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.

The evidence is unequivocal, there's a great deal more luck than skill in people getting very rich.

Get really rich and then help the people who didn't have the opportunity you did.

My people are poor and I am one of them.