Michael Shannon Quotes

What's good for the financial industry probably isn't good for you.

I didn't get paid. I didn't even care that I didn't get paid.

Immense sums were filched from the poor and ignorant.

The pay in the minor leagues, I think it's terrible, it's disgusting, it's exploitative.

Unfortunately, the weaker people are, the more they pay, and the stronger they are, the less they pay - when it comes to banking, commission and management fees, and in every area of our lives.

God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure!

It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor; It's outrageous, the crimes some human beings must endure.

For five years I've felt like the best prostitute in a high-class whorehouse. But all the other girls get paid more than I do.

I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boos was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law."

I think the stress on income inequality is something that every American should take seriously.

What I think is bugging this guy [Steven Lerner] is the belief that debt - forced debt upon middle-class people, students (i.e., student loans and so forth) - has made Wall Street bankers and financial people excessively, unfairly, out-of-proportionally rich.

The idea that we need to “pay our dues” is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.

Why would anyone be able to make $21 million not showing up for work for a single day? That is vulgar capitalism. That is not good for the nation.

Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches.

Feudalism is an economic system where a few people own all the land and the others have no option but to be serfs on such a feudal estate. We now condemn feudalism. We condemn not merely the feudal lords but we condemn the whole structure of rules that sustained feudalism. I am asking people to think similarly about the world economy.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. … Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance.

There are plenty of risks when we encourage "investment" or commoditization of natural resources, as power dynamics may mean that poor people (who are often marginalized and have less power) are sidelined by more powerful interests when money is involved.

If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.

I think we just have to look at all the ways in which we are violating the Earth, each other, economic violence, racial violence, environmental violence - where we are dominating and not cooperating .

They're trying to exterminate our race. I think, probably in a moral sense, the Jewish people have been a blight. I mean as a whole, not every Jew. And they probably deserve to go into the ashbin of history. But saying that and actually shooting or killing people in masses, are two different things. I'm not advocating extermination. I think the best thing is to resettle them in someplace where they can't exploit others. And I don't think they can live among themselves, I really don't.

Why is the media doing what they're doing? Well, there are many answers for it. I don't mean to be insulting anybody here. Clearly, the media hates Trump, yeah, and clearly the media's a bunch of leftists and they don't like Trump's policies, and clearly this and clearly that. But there's another factor to this, too, that I don't think can be denied - and I think they're scared to death. Donald Trump is unraveling, bit by bit, major elements of the Barack Obama agenda.

A bank is a relationship. I can't desert you and expect to have a strong relationship afterward. If I told someone, "I know you've been buying milk from me and you need milk to survive. But the price is no longer $2 a gallon. It's going to be $40 a gallon. I'm going to bankrupt you." What do you guys think of me? You would hate us.

I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.