Mary McGrory Quotes

Economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege

The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

The greatest issue before the people—the question of special privilege and unequal distribution of wealth.

I don't think that the rich should be attacked. There's nothing wrong in being rich.

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

The most powerful forces in economics are not numbers or facts. They are prejudices and preferences. No amount of evidence will ever change the degree to which many of the rich and powerful prefer themselves to be richer and more powerful and others poorer and weaker.

In all the world, rich people are very unpopular.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

Let some people get rich first.

My family got all over me because they said Bush is only for the rich people. Then I reminded them, 'Hey, I'm rich'.

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.

The rich don’t want the poor to get ahead of them.

Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger.

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

A conservative is someone who demands a square deal for the rich.

There are but two families in the world … The haves and the have-nots.

Our rich people are not an ethnic minority. A poor person in Tennessee or Arkansas can say, "I'm not wealthy, but maybe my son or my daughter can grow up to be Bill Gates, or Bill Clinton." That's absolutely not true in countries like Zimbabwe, or Burma, or Indonesia, or Bolivia, where the majority of the people look around and they say, "Everybody who's rich belongs to a different ethnic group.

one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

God help the rich, the poor can look after themselves

The ignorance of the working class and the superior intelligence of the privileged class are superstitions fostered by ... universities and churches, and by all the centers of privilege.

…nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

The rich don’t need to rely on government … -- they can buy … things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may have once had. They also worry about strong government: one that could use its powers to … take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good.

Everybody wants to talk about black and white, when the situation is really about rich people against poor people.

I'm not interested in defending the position of those who already have money, power and privilege.