Henry Hazlitt Quotes

What pushes the masses into the camp of socialism is, even more than the illusion that socialism will make them richer, the expectation that it will curb all those who are better than they themselves are.

Social justice rests on the hate towards those that enjoy a comfortable position, namely, upon envy.

Envy is always referred to by its political alias, 'social justice’.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Envy is the root of the egalitarian ethos.

Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: "Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I."

The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge. In the French Revolution of 1848, a woman coal-heaver is said to have remarked to a richly dressed lady: 'Yes, madam, everything's going to be equal now; I shall go in silks and you'll carry coal.'

I think that we must face the fact that in reality, you cannot have economic and political equality without having some form of social equality. I think this is inevitable.

The thirst for equality can express itself either as a desire to draw everyone down to one's level, or to raise oneself and everyone else up.

The yearning after equality [in economic outcome] is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to B; consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization.

Whether as a radical student, a community organizer or a far left politician, Barack Obama's ideology has been based on a vision of the Haves versus the Have Nots. . .Obama's ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment, and payback.

We've never been people that go around and confront people that have been financially successful and say, 'We hate you. We envy you because of how well you're doing.'

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

That some are poorer than others, ever was and ever will be: And that many are naturally querulous and envious, is an Evil as old as the World.

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

To understand the Left, one must understand that in its view the greatest evil is material inequality. The Left is more troubled by economic inequality than by evil as humanity has generally understood the term.

We're not going to create a more equal society by not prodding at it, are we?

Share the Wealth

We will not settle for a state that will settle for an underclass.

Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us.

As long as the middle class … were convinced that they could make do and possibly prosper, the grudges they felt toward the wealthy were minimal. Sure, they felt a bit envious toward Mr. Megabucks in the gated community, but he was entitled to all his perks as long as the middle class felt OK. Those in the middle (i.e., by definition the majority) are not OK anymore. They feel themselves inexorably sliding down the slope of income inequality and are becoming increasingly angry at the people who assert that a quarter of a million dollars a year ($250,000) is not a lot of money. They are especially irked that some of the people who think this way are running the government.

It's not class warfare to talk about fairness.

We live in a time where it's very much in vogue, constant search for pure utopian equality, and which, on one level, is quite amusingly silly but also on another probably very important.