William Greider Quotes

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

There are two Americas - separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed.

George W. Bush has helped those who have most, hurt those who have least and ignored everyone in between.

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.

One must denounce the economic, financial, and social mechanisms and structures that are manipulated by the rich and powerful for their own benefit at the expense of the poor

The rich have all the speech they want; the poor have lockjaw.

Equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists… we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already”

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

American economic greatness has never trickled down from the top.

The chasm between rich and poor is becoming larger, and I think it's interesting terrain to talk about and expose.

The laws are stacked for the wealthy.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don't think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

Everything the working class has been told to do, the rich do not do. That is my message.

To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.

If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.

The Negro today perhaps has more political power than ever before and he is worse off than ever before. It is not votes but dollars that count in this civilization.

The central issue of our time remains the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer.

There is another world out there, the existence of which the Court, I suspect, either chooses to ignore or fears to recognize. And so the cancer of poverty will continue to grow.

The Privileged and the People form Two Nations.

Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?

If work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.