William Easterly Quotes

One must denounce the economic, financial, and social mechanisms and structures that are manipulated by the rich and powerful for their own benefit at the expense of the poor

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.

God help the rich, the poor can look after themselves

The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

The central issue of our time remains the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer.

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.

Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger.

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

…nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.

The Clinton administration cared a lot about the middle class and the poor. But it also cared a lot - too much, in retrospect - about the rich.

When the rich think about the poor, they have poor ideas.

I believe and I say it is true Democratic feeling, that all the measures of the Government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Welfare for the wealthy simply can no longer be afforded.

I don't think they [Congress] ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.

I didn't believe one man should have so much services and another man should have none.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term ...to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

The poor should not have to learn how to be frugal and the rich should not have to learn to be extravagant.

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

…national wealth, especially when carefully accumulated in the hands of a few individuals, is dangerous in the extreme to human liberty.

If it is held to be morally wrong and anti-social for one man to possess huge estates, which he may develop or not as he chooses, while hundreds of others nearby are relegated to landlessness, why should one people acquire, by similar accident of birth or achievement, a claim to an inordinate share of the good things of life and a right to exclude from them other less fortunate peoples, white, black, or yellow?

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

The poor are little folks living on little lands who want what we already have.

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.