Steven Pinker Quotes

If the nation is rich but people are poor, the country cannot be strong, and society will be unstable.

… perceptions of poverty have gone up because there’s been rising inequality.

When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.

Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that America has made - and maybe the world because this is, sort of, the core of communism and socialism - is that you can have perfect solutions to social problems like poverty, like crime. You're not going to eliminate all crime. Maybe you'll never eliminate all poverty.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

Republicans look after the rich, and Democrats focus on the needs of the middle class. Neither of them looks after the poor.

Never forget that there are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries.

Poverty is the parent of revolution.

This country is very good at creating wealth, but not very good at distributing it.

High levels of inequality generate high costs for society, dampening social mobility, undermining the labour market prospects of vulnerable social groups, and creating social unrest.

Economic inequality is a corrosive force that undermines economic growth, puts a brake on the fight against poverty, and sparks social unrest.

A lot of people, including me, are worried that inequality will lead to bad things.

In America, we have freedom of choice. But some are free to choose between Lamborghini and Rolls Royce while others are free to choose which dumpster they're going to have their meal out of next. Some are free to choose which, you know, homes and farms to foreclosed on, while others choose which bridge they're going to sleep under tonight.

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

India happens to be a rich country inhabited by very poor people.

I avoid going through places where there's too much poverty.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

If you have extremes of haves and have-nots where the gap keeps growing, the have-nots group together and create social disorder, as they can't see a way out of their situation.

Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.

The American dream is dead for the majority of America.

If you go on TV and say there's no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

I often say that poverty needs no passport to travel.

The poverty one still sees in America today is more shocking to me than anything I have seen in Ethiopia or Calcutta or Manila, and has made me, as someone living in a society of great wealth and someone who's never had to worry about the next meal, think seriously about what universal responsibility really means.