Ramsey Clark Quotes

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

The people who own the country are now going to get to run it.

It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's still the same billionaires that run the world.

'Plutocracy.' It has a perfect nuance: chilly, inaccessible, icy-rich.

It means that, in fact, it's - whether fascist is the right word I don't know - more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Rather than living in a democracy, we are living in a benevolent oligarchy.

A ruling class has emerged. We no longer have government of, by and for the people but rather by professional legislators.

The rich are hijacking American democracy.

America is less democratic than it might be because the preferences of the ultra wealthy often outweigh the preferences of everyone else.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

A democracy, when put to the strain, grows weak; and it is supplanted by oligarchy [rule by the few].

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

America’s super-elite has been particularly effective at using the tools of a political democracy to protect its minority privilege.

Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.

We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life.

We all want prosperity, but not at the expense of liberty. Poverty is not as great a danger to liberty as is wealth, with its corrupting, demoralizing influences. Let us never have a Government at Washington owing its retention to the power of the millionaires rather than to the will of millions.

Our democracies are increasingly captured by a ruling class that seeks to perpetuate its privileges.

Most people seem unaware that corporate influence and wealth has taken over public policy, such that government policy now favors the wealthy few at the expense of the people.

With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that's what really happens.

It is not good to have a rule of many.

Great wealth took possession of the government. It was reflected in Mr. Harding's selection of a cabinet.

I've never been an oligarch. The definition of an oligarch is someone who has co-operated with the government, and I never did.