George McGovern Quotes

Millions of people are falling out of the middle class into the ranks of the poor.

Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.

For people who are at the bottom economically, the world is becoming a harder and harder place. And yet the incentives to become rich are so great because enormous amounts of wealth are being accumulated. And so those two things, that carrot and stick, are beating people along this trajectory of trying desperately to move up in the world.

The middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table.

The middle class today would be poor by the standards of the 1950s. Today, with two people working, they would still live paycheck to paycheck.

We have a choice: we can allow the growing disparity between rich and poor to continue unimpeded, or we can take action to budget responsibly and strengthen and expand the middle class. If we want this economy - and this country - to meet its full potential, the choice is simple.

Nonstop taxes killed the middle class.

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.

Right now, America's middle class is struggling to meet their basic needs.

The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality.

The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

It is surprising how few references in our politics there are to the underclass as compared by the middle class.

There’s been an economic war going on in this country and the middle class and the poor have been losing..

It's no longer an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species.

And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.

We need the middle class to feel more confident about its prospects and about its future. We need to cut down on this anxiety that sees some people succeeding and the majority struggling - having to make choices between paying for their kids' education or saving for their own retirement.

The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive - no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for people who aim to become middle class if possible.

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 is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

The middle class has disappeared. We have a highway to poverty and no roads coming out.

I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.

The middle-class America of my youth was another country.

The rich don’t want the poor to get ahead of them.

If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning.

I think the defining issue of our time is: Does the economic, social, and political system work for the middle class?