Guy Standing Quotes

I don't like a class system. I don't like the idea of being in a different class than other people.

In England, more than in any comparable country, those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor, and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege. For those of us who believe in social justice, this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible.

Luxury may possibly contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor.

A permanent division of labor inevitably creates occupational and class inequality and conflict.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

The reality in the neighborhood that I live in is: if I don't constantly reconcile what I have against what other people don't, either I need to leave and be around other people who have what I have, or I'm constantly engaged in this kind of dynamic flow of opportunity and sharing.

We have to improve life, not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system. But also for and with those who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity.

Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out.

This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside.

I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.

I do think there is this danger that our society has made its peace with decline. I'd like to jolt them out of their complacency a little bit.

When I get out across the country and listen to people, the resentment that I see and the frustration that I see is that we have a generation of people who are fairly convinced that their kids are not going to have a better quality of life or a better future than they will.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

Public action should seek to expand the set of opportunities of those who have the least voice and fewest resources and capabilities.

India has political freedom but it does not have economic freedom.

No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people…

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

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 great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

I know of only three ways of living in society: one must be a beggar, a thief, or a wage earner.

The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs;

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age -- other people's money -- these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in..

The extreme profligacy, improvidence, and misery which are so prevalent among the laboring classes in many countries are chiefly to be ascribed to the want of education.