Arthur Balfour Quotes

… that wealthy, intelligent, and energetic portion of the Irish community which predominates in Ulster.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

One of the most disruptive forces in politics is the feeling that wealth is concentrated in the hands of an alien people.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

You will notice that the Occupy Wall Street crowds - and the progressives who support them - focus on bringing the wealthy down to earth rather than lifting the 99 percent. They have a nearly religious belief that too much wealth is fundamentally immoral and unhealthy for society.

The men of middling property and poor men can never be safe in a mixed representation with the men of over-grown property.

Allow not the abject to rule over and dominate them who are noble and worthy of honour, and suffer not the high-minded to be at the mercy of the contemptible and worthless, for this is what We observed upon Our arrival in the City (Constantinople), and to it We bear witness. We found among its inhabitants some who were possessed of an affluent fortune and lived in the midst of excessive riches, whilst others were in dire want and abject poverty. This ill beseemeth thy sovereignty, and is unworthy of thy rank…. strive thou to rule with equity among men

Was there or will there ever be a nation whose individuals were all equal, in natural and acquired qualities, in virtues, talents, and riches? The answer in all mankind must be in the negative.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

We want no black Ireland in America. We want no aggrieved class in America.

Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

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

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing

The poor developed an envy and an extreme jealousy, born of the realization that they are as worthy, or even more worthy than the wealthy, and are nonetheless afflicted with poverty, hunger, misery, and contempt.

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

In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.

Since Mill, in 1848, wrote his chapter on the future of the working classes, the question of the distribution of wealth has be-come of still greater importance. We cannot look round on the political phenomena of to-day without seeing that this question is at the root of them. We see the perplexity in which men stand, and the divisions springing up in our great political parties, because of the uncertainty of politicians how to grapple with it.

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

The world belongs to the wealthy, and nowhere is this injustice more apparent than in the workplace.

In the ideal world, philanthropy should be redundant or at least it should be at the edges, as innovation or risk capital. But it's far from an ideal world; the wealthy are cornering more and more opportunities and resources from this planet. So, the big challenge for philanthropy is... can it engage with the distribution of wealth itself?

The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.

The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.