Jeffrey Sachs Quotes

We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization.

People don't want to have to justify their privileges; they don't want to have to justify having access to the power and resource that wealth brings. And by not talking about it, they are able to hold onto their power without being questioned, and I think that makes them feel more secure.

Those who are privileged have little regard for history.

Water does tend to flow up hill toward money and power.

I myself am a descendant of the European tribes, now called nations, that have established political, military, and economic dominance over the world. I confess to my sin of privilege and my reluctance to forego the perks my race and class afford me.

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.

Wherever the dominant culture is, that’s where the money goes.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

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

Colorism and racism don't stop when you're a musician or when you have wealth or when you're in any given position.

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Status in itself is criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

Nowadays nothing but money counts: a fortune brings honors, friendships; the poor man everywhere lies low.

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims.

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.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

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

For a long time in the United States, in practice if not in principle, only white, male, Protestants were born free and equal.