Noam Chomsky Quotes

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.

The messenger matters. When people of modest means complain about inequality, it usually gets written off as class warfare, but when billionaires complain, the problem is redefined.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

This contempt for money is a trick developed by the rich to keep the poor without it.

The First Law of Class Warfare: Once inequalities develop, the upper classes can, with relative ease, drastically reduce the probability of success for any equalizing challenges to the system.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Like Venice’s oligarchs, America’s super-rich are destroying the social mobility that creates wealth.

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

Surrounded by the evidence of their success, the wealthy come to believe that they are fundamentally better than other Americans and that working people deserve their declining fortunes. They trumpet meritocracy while ensuring that their children enjoy crushing advantages from birth. They have unprecedented access to politicians and use it to push policies that swell their wealth while defunding institutions, such as public education, that sustain opportunities for less-fortunate Americans.

I'm not going to do class warfare; I want to be wealthy.

The rich do not want people who come from poor families to rise to the highest position in the country.

I think America has dealt with - I mean, this is simplistic, and of course I don't live in America - but the impression I get is that there is not a kind of obligation to dislike those who are better off or be frightened of those who are worse off.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

France has the least social mobility of any developed country. The social elevator no longer works. It's broken.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

What the 'supposed 99 percent' don't realize is that they are better off if there are more fat cats, not less.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.

It is a fact that around the world the elites of every country are making money.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.