Zygmunt Bauman Quotes

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.

What must a poor nation do when its very sustenance depends on the remains and bits that the nations gracefully throw them, once they have had their fill…. Our planet is rich enough to provide for all of us, so why this tragic war for life which has been clouding our lives for generations?

Because we can expect future generations to be richer than we are, no matter what we do about resources, asking us to refrain from using resources now so that future generations can have them later is like asking the poor to make gifts to the rich.

I've often said that far more sensible than a 'make poverty history' campaign would be a 'make wealth history' campaign. It is, after all, the wealthy people who do all the damage. The less money you earn, the fewer resources you use up.

For if enough people were really convinced that growth should be halted, and if they acted on that conviction, then billions of others might be deprived of any realistic hope of gaining the opportunities now enjoyed by the more fortunate.

We must create a kind of globalization that works for everyone... and not just for a few.

The greatest difficulty with the world is not its ability to produce, but the unwillingness to share.

The world is richer than ever, and the gaps between rich and poor are wider.

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.

In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.

There's no question that how Johannesburg operates is what made me interested in the idea of wealth discrepancy. 'Elysium' could be a metaphor for just Jo'burg, but it's also a metaphor for the Third World and the First World. And in science fiction, separation of wealth is a really interesting idea to mess with.

The West has become the world model; developing countries are dreaming of living like us, which is impossible. They should reject our model, because it is not sustainable. Developing countries should even give us the example, but unfortunately that's not what happens.

A single Dallas Cowboys football game uses up as much electricity as the entire nation of Liberia in those same three hours - one reason the globe, if looked at from a certain height, is a cluster of lights surrounded by enormous patches of dark.

With fewer resources to share around more people, how can the poor have improved lifestyles?

It's true that hydropower exploitation can bring economic development, but not necessarily to the benefit of local people.

The problems of the Third World—its poverty, its ignorance, its debt—never really seemed to affect Europeans and Americans. No longer. It's a little warmer than it used to be. The water is rising.

It is futile to seek solutions to environmental disturbances without considering them from a broad perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and the inequities within and among nations.

You're not going to solve the problems of poverty in the world with less energy.

Distribution of the wealth of the world is something for which no one sees a practical solution

… the mere notion that there are three times as many people on Earth as there were when I started making television. How can the Earth accommodate them? When people, including politicians, set their faces against looking at the consequences—it’s just unbelievable that anyone could ignore it.

Income inequality is the central problem all the way across the world.

What does peace mean in a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 587 billionaires exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest countries?

I would like to see an end to war, poverty, and unnecessary human suffering. But I can't see it in a monetary-based system where the richest nations control most of the world's resources.

The grim truth is that the rich are able to live as they do only because others are poor: there is neither the physical nor ecological space for everyone to pursue private luxury.