Lawrence Summers Quotes

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.

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.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

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

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

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

Social inequality … divides society into two classes -- the wage-slaves and the grabbers of capital

I didn't believe one man should have so much services and another man should have none.

The Privileged and the People form Two Nations.

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing

You can make too much of inequality because there is always so much of it.

If the upper classes, through their political representatives, pass legislation that diminishes the income of the middle class and reduces services to the poor and further enrich the affluent, this is not class warfare. But if the middle class and the poor, and their representatives, complain that this is unfair, that is class warfare. So say some of our politicians who oppose class warfare.

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.

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

'Munmun' happened because the human world's dizzying inequality - of wealth and of power - had begun to send me over the edge, and I had to write something to try to help myself understand it a little better.

The laws are stacked for the wealthy.

Remember, until the 1970s, the spread of democracy has always been accompanied by the decline of inequality. The more democratic our societies have been, the more equal they have been becoming. Now we have the reverse tendency. The spread of democracy now is very much accompanied by the increase in inequality.

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.

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.

The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health and social mobility are all threatened.

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

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

The rights of the minority must be protected and the rich are always fewer in number than the poor.