Bernie Sanders Quotes

There is far too little discussion in Washington about the collapse of the middle class , almost no discussion at all about the incredible income inequality and wealth inequality in this country, and the fact that we're moving toward an oligarch form of society.

The men of middling property and poor men can never be safe in a mixed representation with the men of over-grown property.

In my view, there is no justice when the 15 wealthiest people in this country in the last two years, saw their wealth increase by $170 billion. That is more wealth acquired in a two year period than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans.

During the last two years the wealthiest 14 Americans saw their wealth increase by $157 billion. This is truly unbelievable. This $157 billion INCREASE in wealth among 14 individuals is more wealth that is owned, collectively, by 130 million Americans. This country does not survive morally, economically or politically when so few have so much, and so many have so little.

We live in a country where a small number of people have incredible wealth and power. America has more income and wealth inequality than any other major country.

In Colombia today we have 16% of the population, which is a very small amount of the population owning 90% of the land and 20 years ago it wasn't like that.

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.

We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us: this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It's not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I?

Our family's fortune is growing faster than ever. We're a part of a small number of American families that own most of the country's wealth. But having so much in the hands of so few can't be good for America.

American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively few very wealthy people and very few very poor people, but that is gone to today and the middle class is shrinking.

No one should have more than five times the wealth of the poorest person.

If you have more rich people and more poor people and fewer people in the middle, what you lose is democracy.

The prince should try to prevent too great an inequality of wealth .... prevent the wealth of the multitude from being hoarded by a few.

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

There’s just too much money in the hands of too few.

Today, half of the national income goes to the richest 10 percent. In 2007, the top 1 percent controlled 34.6 percent of the wealth—significantly more than the bottom 90 percent who control just 26.9 percent.

The greatest issue before the people—the question of special privilege and unequal distribution of wealth.

No matter how we name and dissect inequality, we must keep explaining the larger downside of such concentrated extreme wealth.

If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.

By 2015, the top 1 percent of families took home more than 20 percent of income. Wealth distribution was 10 times worse than that: the families in the top 1 percent owned as much as the families in the bottom 90 percent.

We have an economy that's really geared toward rewarding the investor class. What are we doing to make sure that people who want to have a middle-class life are able to keep up?

Our economic system has enabled companies and individuals to use their power and influence to capture and retain an ever-increasing share of the benefits of economic growth while the benefits for the poorest in society have shrunk.

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.

Wealth is used to entrench inequality, not to trickle down and solve it.

It says anybody can make it, because we're all on a level playing field. But we're not on a level playing field. That 's precisely the point, and that's what the rich don't want to look at. They don't want to recognize that they're not producing wealth at all. They're hoarding wealth. That's different.