Shane Claiborne Quotes

The whole world is set up so that for places like Switzerland to exist, that are crime-free and with the best care for everybody, you have to have places like Sudan, or Jamaica. But really, there's enough to share, when you check it. It's not that complicated, really. It's probably less thinking and more feeling that's required.

The only way to have a better world and end poverty is by closing the gap between the top and the bottom.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It's not politically viable; it's not morally right; it's just not going to happen.

We live in a very unequal society.

I identify with the 99 per cent.

I do not believe in widening the income gap between rich and poor, and my life's work in the inner city of Detroit demonstrates that far more than any sound bite.

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

Because Katrina put it out there, no one can play the pretend game anymore that there isn't poverty and inequality in this country. The Millions More Movement - Katrina gives it added significance.

If a few companies were less greedy, the people at the bottom woud have a lot more.

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.

Society is composed of two great classes-those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

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

For the good of Spain, I should like there to be rather fewer rich people and rather fewer poor.

Poor men's words have little weight.

History shows that when you have continuing income inequality it is an invitation to class conflict.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

Yet today our splendid theory of government is confronted by a great peril. We have become blind to evils that menace us. We are confronted with glutted markets and idle labor. It is a condition that makes it possible for a few men to become landlords of a proud city like this while God's poor are packed in the slums. Such a condition is not only a menace to Republican institutions, but a travesty upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country.

If I wrote in Michael Harrington's time, roughly 50 years later when he published 'The Other America', I'd still be writing about poverty and also entrenched racial injustice.

Economic inequality is not about food stamps and homeless shelters. It is about being a devotee of social justice and equality.

Nobody talks about the poor. Everybody talks about the middle class and just kinda want to ignore that the poor exist. And you cannot ignore that they exist if you want to help them.

We always keep saying, 'We're the best, we're the best.' Other countries offer healthcare for their people. We don't, so how are we the best there? We've got poverty all over the place, and it's the haves and the have-nots, so how are we the best there?

'Redistributing the wealth' - that phrase gets used so much that you almost get numb to it.

We remain a highly unequal society in which poverty and prosperity are still defined by race as well as gender.