Jonathan Jackson Quotes

America is a young country, with small inequalities of property, and without manufactures. Few people are here dependent on the rich, for every man has an opportunity of becoming rich himself…the people of New England enjoy an equality of condition unknown in any other part of the world.

Virtue, patriotism, or love of country, never was and never will be, till mens’ natures are changed a fixed, permanent principle and support of government. But in an agricultural country, a general possession of land…may be rendered perpetual, and the inequalities introduced by commerce, are too fluctuating to endanger government. An equality of property, with a necessity of alienation, constantly operating to destroy combinations of powerful families, is the very soul of a republic.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

…an enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the Rights, and destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind…

Keep up the middle class; lop off aristocracy on the one hand, and a rabble at the other; let the middle class ... have the power.

If Eleanor Roosevelt has her way, how are we going to tell the rich from the poor?

We do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

As liberty can never subsist without equality, nor equality be long preserved without an agrarian law, or something like it; so when men’s riches are become immeasurably or surprisingly great, a people, who regard their own security, ought to make a strict enquiry how they came by them, and oblige them to take down their own size, for fear of terrifying the community, or mastering it.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

In America there are none poor, and none even that can be called peasants. Each citizen has some property, and all citizens have the same rights as the richest individual, or landed proprietor, in the country.

I am a social democrat - I believe in pursuing greater equality and tackling social justice - but... you can't do that unless you have got a strong economy, unless you have got a vibrant business base earning the wealth that makes that possible.

In this country there is no rank but rank mutton.

Unless combated and overcome by social and political action, the influence of the new industrial and technological order favors the concentration of wealth, power and decision-making in the hands of a small public or private controlling group.

In order to have economic democracy you have to have equal access to property.

Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit, to society, and scattered with equal hand throughout all its conditions.

We’ve taken care not to penalize the wealthy but we have to redistribute some income …It is through reform that we can obtain fairness in the modern world…A reformed welfare state is the only way to obtain social justice.

To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth ought not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration.

Money is the great leveler.

The bigger the gap there is between the rich and the poor, the less stable and successful the society will be

While property continues to be pretty equally divided, and a considerable share of information pervades the community, the tendency of people’s suffrage will be to elevate merit even from obscurity. As riches increase and accumulate in a few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in greater degree considered only as a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.

…primogeniture was founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth, and to all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation should be restrained and regulated according to the fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago.

Democracy really depends not only on not just having a middle class but having wealth distributed relatively evenly across the society so that people buy into the legitimacy of the system

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

Ted Kennedy’s life’s work was not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard, to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity, to make real the dream of our founding.