Oppression makes a poor country.
Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.
Maybe we should be directing our anger elsewhere - like toward Wall Street. Why is it we never think of Big Business when we think of welfare recipients? Companies take more of our tax dollars, and in much more questionable ways, than do those who are trying to heat their apartments with a kerosene stove.
One of the members of the group, I can't remember which one, found out we were making $3 - $5,000 a night. We were getting a hundred dollars a week a piece. Everybody got upset about it.
When I was poor and I complained about inequality they said I was bitter. Now I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm starting to think they just don't want to talk about inequality.
The economy is rigged in favor of those at the top.
On every continent and in every epoch the peoples who have excelled in creating wealth have been the victims of some of society's greatest brutalities.
In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties.
You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.
I think this has been a class war waged by the rich against the poor, and I think that they won. And I think the poor are fighting back.
In this, of all the countries in the world, possession of inordinate wealth by individuals should be held as a crime against Indian humanity.
You have friends, and they die. You have a disease, someone you care about has a disease, Wall Street people are scamming everyone, the poor get poorer, the rich get richer. That's what we're surrounded by all the time.
The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes.
Poverty in Egypt, or anywhere else, is not very difficult to explain. There are three basic causes: People are poor because they cannot produce anything highly valued by others. They can produce things highly valued by others but are hampered or prevented from doing so. Or, they volunteer to be poor.
I think the sense of fairness in humans is very strongly developed, and that's why we react so strongly to all the bonuses received by Wall Street executives. We want to know why they deserve these benefits.
Poverty is a crime and the poor are terrorists
Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches.
I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.
There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.
A rising economic tide is bad for people who live off of the poverty of others.
I think the big problem is you have a vicious cycle of wealth and power in America that's just gotten completely out of control and you've seen it in politics.
