Eugene V. Debs Quotes

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.

The rich are hijacking American democracy.

They who possess the prince possess the laws.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

America’s super-elite has been particularly effective at using the tools of a political democracy to protect its minority privilege.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

Great wealth took possession of the government. It was reflected in Mr. Harding's selection of a cabinet.

In large commercial cities, the money power is, I fear irresistible. It is not by open corruption that it always, or even most generally, operates.

We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.

Whenever people with money have power over people with less money, you have the potential for exploitation.

Every government that exists -- or ever existed, or ever will exist -- is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves". Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.

The people who own the country are now going to get to run it.

I have several times suggested that what I call the “Establishment” in this country is today more powerful than ever before. By “Establishment” I do not mean only the centers of official power – though they are certainly part of it – but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised ... the “Establishment” can be seen at work in the activities of, not only the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl Marshal, but of such lesser mortals as the Chairman of the Arts Council, the Director-General of the BBC, and even the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, not to mention dignitaries like Lady Violet Bonham Carter.

It matters not one iota what political party is in power or what President holds the rein of office. We are not politicians, or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all our tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connections, our purchased Senators, our hungry Congressmen, and our public-speaking demagogues, into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign that threatens the integrity of our estate.

“Capital” is a sort of cabalistic word, like “Church” or “State,” or any other of those general terms which are invented by those who fleece the rest of mankind to conceal the hand that shears them.

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

… the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government.

It is no accident that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the Gilded Age. Now, as then, the titans are seeking an even greater political voice to match their economic power. Now, as then, the inevitable danger is that they will confuse their own self-interest with the common good.

The obtuseness and cowardice of people of property and influence and the stupidity of most [military] officers, frustrated all efforts.

In the 1820s, westerners and political outsiders worried that rich men in the east had commandeered the government for their own ends.

It is a dark, unspoken truth that the powerful - the 'ruling class' - make up the rules as they go along.

The system under which we live is owned and operated by people who do not deserve to run the world.

Money buys access; access buys influence.