Harry A. Blackmun Quotes

When you come from desperate poverty, and that's exactly what I come from, you know that nonsenses are not to be tolerated. I'm not sure who gains from chaos, but I know it's not the poor folks in the council flats. The politics of vindictiveness is never, ever anything like a solution.

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.

We are undemocratic, then, in our religion, as is proved by our efforts to “raise” the poor.

Poor men's words have little weight.

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

Men who are scandalized at the lack of freedom in Russia do not ask themselves how real is liberty among the poor, the weak, and the ignorant in capitalist society.

Imagine a society in which there were neither rich nor poor. What evils, afflictions, sorrows, disorders, catastrophes, disasters, tribulations, misfortunes, agonies, calamities, despair, desolation and ruin would be unknown to man!

I started out young and idealistic, and it was all about social justice and fair distribution of resources. I didn't understand why everybody couldn't be equally prosperous.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.

There is this notion that the lives of the comfortable-off middle class don't merit being treated seriously and with compassion.

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.

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

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

We are at great risk in our democracy for failing to understand the great depths of poverty.

There are two Americas. One which influences government and economic policy and the other which must live with the results.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

You can have class in the ghetto and trash in the White House.

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

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

My perspective is never gonna change on that... We've got to do a much better job to take care of poor people, because you cannot put all the poor people in bad neighborhoods, send them to bad schools, and say, 'Good luck in life.' That's just not right.

I fall into the camp that income inequality is the biggest problem we face.

I think that there always have been and always will be at least two Americas - the poor America, the second America, tends to be in the shadows. Sometimes it's an America of people in a ghetto of color, sometimes it's an economic ghetto, but definitely there is a parallel America which people in the dominant America prefer to ignore if they can.

Capitalism, racism and inhuman technocracy quietly develop in their own way. The causes of misery are no longer to be found in the inner attitudes of men, but have long been institutionalized.