Henrik Ibsen Quotes

What the Labour movement is about is a broad mass of people actively engaged in a democratic process.

There's a wider agenda that speaks to what the Democratic Party has historically stood for, which are economic rights for those who are struggling in the middle class, concern for the poor, for economic justice for those who are marginalized in our society.

The laboring man in this bounteous and hospitable country has no ground for complaint. His vote is potential and he is elevated thereby to the position of a man.

In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue, and thought to have real effects, they must advocate the message that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live.

Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government.

The workers of the nation were tired of waiting for corporate industry to right their economic wrongs, to alleviate their social agony and to grant them their political rights. Despairing of fair treatment, they resolved to do something for themselves.

There is one class of men, whom it especially behoves to be tenacious of the right of free discussion. I mean the poor.

You need to remind people that you vote, you matter, and that they can't succeed without your help.

The more I support with my economic plans the building of a middle class, the quicker they're going to turn around and say, 'Hey, we want a bigger say in things.' So, I knew what I was getting into right at the beginning. It's the right thing to do.

I may, and I think I represent a tradition that means a lot to me, which has really always been about fighting for others, for middle-class families, for working class - for working people, you know, and that's a tradition and a commitment that I take very seriously.

This administration and these folk who run Washington are no more interested in our welfare and our well being than the man on the moon. And we have got to start taking our destiny into our hands.

The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century.

Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.

We cannot run a democracy without a strong middle class.

What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.

When women are pessimistic about their political strength and feel hopeless about changing the conditions of their lives, it is almost as if they do not believe that democracy means the country belongs to them. But it's true.

Democracy’s opportunity. Here is the opportunity to be of service to the people. Here is the chance for this party to have been of service to the people of the United States. Here is our chance to have been of help to the poor man. Here is our chance to have relieved him of the burdens and to have given him the benefits of a government that could have promoted the enterprises and furnished the conveniences and the facilities needed by every man, woman, and child in this country.

In politics heaven lies at the feet of the poor masses.

If you have more rich people and more poor people and fewer people in the middle, what you lose is democracy.

Can we blame an elector of the poorer classes, who has only the choice among two or three rich men, for requiring from the one he votes for a pledge to those measures which he considers as a test of emancipation from the class-interests of the rich?

Every Man A King

What did the workers and peasants gain when power passed from the kings and nobles to the bankers and manufacturers?

Economic democracy and political democracy are like two legs of a person. They must go side by side…. Once people know about their rights and claim their rights, nothing is going to stop them.

Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave.

In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.