Industrial Democracies Quotes

It is a melancholy but an undoubted fact, that, even in the most thriving countries, part of the population annually dies of mere want.

Populists feed on democratic dysfunction. As long as democratic elites and institutions in advanced industrial democracies remain unable or unwilling to tackle the myriad challenges facing their societies, we should expect populism to remain an attractive political option.

What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group's conclusion is 'no'. The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?

Let him who will, be he economic tyrant or sordid mercenary, pit his strength against this mighty upsurge of human sentiment now being crystallized in the hearts of thirty million workers who clamor for the establishment of industrial democracy and for participation in its tangible fruits. He is a madman of a fool who believes that this river of human sentiment can be damned.

Labor is marching toward the goal of industrial democracy and contributing constructively toward a more rational arrangement of our domestic economy.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination', we might say - exercised through the mass media.

There is a dismal record of failure in Africa on the part of the developed world that shocks and shames our civilization.

The capitalist free market is a marvelous servant but a disastrous master. In one of the greatest achievements of the second half of this [the 20th] century, a few favored societies learned to convert it from master to servant. The danger now is that a smug and vainglorious capitalism will not remember the lesson.

The United States has the highest poverty rate [and] the greatest … wealth inequality of any major developed economy in the world…. No other developed country is as addicted to poverty and inequality as we are, and yet somehow they prosper.

The lack of equity and of a sense of solidarity in international transactions works to the advantage of the industrialized nations so that the gulf between the rich and the poor is ever widening. Hence derives the feeling of frustration among third world countries, and the accusations of exploitation and economic colonialism brought against the industrialized nations.

I have a premonition which sounds like utter folly, and yet it will not leave me: the military state will become one vast factory.

We are the only industrial democracy that does not have one political party that is labor based.

Even in the United States, 'you have a sort of welfare state, even if you don't want to admit it -- you don't allow people to die on the street.