Pius XI Quotes

The distribution of wealth is just as important as its creation.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

What does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?

The measure of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but whether, as Franklin Roosevelt said, we provide enough for those who have too little.

It must be assumed and established as a principle, that the right of private property must be regarded as sacred. Wherefore, the law ought to favor this right and, so far as it can, see that the largest possible number among the masses of the population prefer to own property.... But if the productive activity of the multitude can be stimulated by the hope of acquiring some property... , it will gradually come to pass that, with the difference between extreme wealth and extreme penury removed, one class will become the neighbor to the other.

The production of wealth is the result of agreement between labor and capital, between employer and employed. Its distribution, therefore, will follow the law of its creation, or great injustice will be done.

This administration and the leadership in Congress appear to be intent on valuing wealth over work, thereby placing working families at a distinct disadvantage.

The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich

If work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

A strong economy is perfectly consistent with concern for equity and economic justice.

The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment to those excluded from the appropriation.

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

The society of Christendom and especially of Western Christendom up to the explosion, which we call the Reformation, had been a society of owners: a Proprietarial Society. It was one in which there remained strong bonds between one class and another, and in which there was a hierarchy of superior and inferior, but not, in the main, a distinction between a restricted body of possessors and a main body of destitute at the mercy of the possessors, such as our society has become.

Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst 2 million of India's poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?

Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers.

Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, they injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.

I knew that it is out of the question to have honest, economical government while a few are inordinately rich and the great mass of men are poor. In fact, it is to be doubted if anything really worthwhile can be done until there is a fairer distribution of wealth.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property.

There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.

In an era of global abundance, our world has the resources to reduce dramatically the massive divides that persist between rich and poor, if only those resources can be unleashed in the service of all peoples.

There is not a more dangerous experiment than to place property in the hands of one class, and political power in those of another... If property cannot retain the political power, the political power will draw after it the property.

Progress is not striving for economic justice or fairness, but economic growth.

They [poor youth] don't have any respect for the property of others because they don't have any property.

… spread the benefits and shrink the burdens all across the globe.

It is but right that the men of brains and brawn who produce shall be recognized in the distribution. We simply ask a just proportion of the proceeds.