Henry George Quotes

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.

The production of wealth is the result of agreement between labor and capital, between employer and employed. Its distribution, therefore, will follow the law of its creation, or great injustice will be done.

As time goes on we get closer to that American Dream of there being a pie cut up and shared. Usually greed and selfishness prevent that and there is always one bad apple in every barrel.

I don't think equality is intrinsically valuable, meaning in and of itself. I'm not against inequality... if Bill Gates gets another hundred million dollars, it's no skin off my nose.

We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money NOT helping other people.

I knew that it is out of the question to have honest, economical government while a few are inordinately rich and the great mass of men are poor. In fact, it is to be doubted if anything really worthwhile can be done until there is a fairer distribution of wealth.

What does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?

Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural, and honest condition.

How much more of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?

The core principle is that we want an economy that works for everyone, not just for a small elite. We want equal opportunity, not equality of outcome. We want to make sure that there's upward mobility again, in our society and in our economy.

All privileges based on wealth, and all emnity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American.

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.

A too great disproportion among the citizens weakens any state. Every person, if possible, ought to enjoy the fruits of his labour, in a full possession of all the necessities, and many of the conveniences of life. No one can doubt, but such an equality is most suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less from the happiness of the rich than it adds to that of the poor.

We must put an end to both economic freeloading and economic exploitation in America. There must be no place for parasites who draw their sustenance from society without giving anything in return.

Obama is playing to the lowest common denominator of everybody, and he is telling them that if anybody's got more money than you do, it's not fair and it's unjustified and somehow you have been ripped off or screwed, and that is his message.

The economic egalitarianism of the liberal ideology implies ... the reduction of Westerners to hunger and poverty.

Communities now find themselves in possession of improvements [resulting from the WPA] which even in 1929 they would have thought themselves presumptuous to dream of... [but] everywhere there had been an overhauling of the word presumptuous. We are beginning to wonder if it is not presumptuous to take for granted that some people should have much, and some should have nothing; that some people are less important than others and should die earlier; that the children of the comfortable should be taller and fatter, as a matter of right, than the other children of the poor.

In the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have earned are said to be greedy, while those who wish to take their earnings from them and give it to others (who will vote for them in return) show compassion.

Equality is not possible. The pursuit of equality, however, people really love that. For some reason, people attach the most wonderful of motives to people who say they see all this inequality out there and need to fix it. It's just not fair. You'll hear it manifest itself in discussions about the so-called widening gap between the rich and the poor or the widening gap between men and women. It's like actually two twin beds.

The greed of the billionaire class has got to end and we are going to end it for them.

I'm no communist.I'm a tax cutting Conservative. But I want a capitalism that is fairer to forgotten people.

Economic equality of my conception does not mean that every one will literally have the same amount.

Employers able to work together with workers and sharing gains and profits will lead to a much better world, getting away from income inequality.