Tavis Smiley Quotes

Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

There are huge divorces and divides and chasms in black America between the have-gots and the have-nots, between the monied and the poor, between the educated and the non-educated. And there are huge and growing chasms daily. And I want to say that it's not simply about generation. It's about genre.

If you are poor today, you will always be poor. Only the rich now acquire riches.

What good is a high GDP if some, or even many, Americans are left behind?

As usual, the people who are poorest - the blacks, Hispanics and disabled people - are going to suffer more than anyone else under the [Barack] Obama administration.

Texas has arguably the most extreme separation between the well off and everyday people in the United States.

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.

Income inequality has gotten worse under President Barack Obama.

Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same.

If you think black people have a motivation problem, open up a Wal-Mart and advertise a thousand jobs. Watch 5,000 people show up.

It so happens, in Malaysia, the people who are in a way not doing as well constitute the majority of the people - the Bumiputeras.

I don't mind the rich getting richer, but the poor shouldn't be getting poorer, and there should be more people moving into the middle class.

People naturally long for a bit of the wealth that is whorling all around them, and if the work and education available to them won't get them closer to the comforts that they see others enjoying, the temptation to take shortcuts can be fierce.

It isn't the rich people's fault that poor people are poor. Poor people who get an education and work hard in this country will stop being poor. That should be the goal for all poor people everywhere.

That fallacy flies in the face of studies that show, every day, in every way, things are getting a little worse for America's minorities relative to the progress made by those in the top percentiles of assets and income.

The ability to take advantage of freedom and democracy is proportional to the size of your bank account.

Visible minorities lead in education but trail in income.

Americans have historically been more willing than Europeans to tolerate high inequality levels if accompanied by strong economic growth and a healthy middle class.

Today, if you were raised poor, you're just as likely to stay poor as you were 50 years ago.

When the World Economic Forum was established in 1971, the global population was four billion, of which 50% lived in poverty.

The U.S. has some of the most significant income inequality in the developed world, yet people seem routinely to underestimate that fact.

If the U.S. is the richest country in the world, why is it also the most unequal?

I don't really care much about what the top one per cent earn. The gap we ought to care about in wealth is between the middle and the bottom.

The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries.