Noam Chomsky Quotes

Such hath it been--shall be--beneath the sun The many still must labour for the one.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.

In 1750, 75 percent of people on the planet worked to support the top 25 percent.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

All down history, nine-tenths of mankind have been grinding corn for the remaining one-tenth, been paid with the husks, and bidden to thank God they had the husks.

Surely there is something unlovely, to modern as against medieval minds, about marked inequality of either kind income or power.

We can have a democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

Throughout our history - and that of the world - it's always come down to the friction between the haves and have-nots or between the average Joes and the large corporations. So that's a recurring theme in my work.

I'm not interested in defending the position of those who already have money, power and privilege.

The billionaire class fully understands what is at stake. That's why a handful of them are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the current elections. Their goal is not to strengthen the middle class, but continue the trend in which the rich are getting richer at the expense of everyone else.

Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another... Inequality undermines democracy.

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.

So long as there are nobles and commoners, the wealthy and the poor, those with power will be heard, and those without ignored. That's the world.

Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.

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

O America, how you've taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

Many who have nothing opposed to the few who have everything, and as long as these disparities remain, as long as these distances remain between people and forces, I think we'll be in a perpetual state of upheaval.

Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

The class war is over.

Every strategy for real social change - land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources ... - has been cleverly, cunningly, and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people which has a stranglehold on the political process.

One needs either equality or political and economic superiority.

Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.