Oppression of the Poor Quotes

The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat ... [is a] state that is democratic for the proletariat and the poor in general.

Ensnared in his starvation, Chaplin-man is always just below political awareness. A strike is a catastrophe for him because it threatens a man truly blinded by his hunger; this man achieves an awareness of the working-class condition only when the poor man and the proletarian coincide under the gaze (and the blows) of the police.

The Catholic Church has always exploited the working classes…. Your religion I spit on as I do on all religions, -- on Orthodox, Jewish, Mohammedan, and the rest. There is no law here but Soviet Law and by that law you must die

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

When only a minority consisting of capitalists can enjoy the good life, while the majority of workers must endure hardship, they will naturally not be able to live together in peace and harmony.

I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world's goods. But blow for blow I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world's happiness.

Damned, damned be the rich! May not even their fingernails be left!... I'm sure that they are going to Hell head-first.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

[Americans are] trampled to death beneath the iron heel [of monopolies and trusts.]

Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.

For the bourgeoisie, the main danger against which it had to be protected, that which had to be avoided at all costs, was armed uprising, was the armed people, was the workers taking to the streets in an assault against the government.

It is assumed that the daughters of the poor are for the use of the rich. They assume that we’re their property.

The US government is usually on the wrong side against the poor and downtrodden, because the wrong side is the right side, given the class interests upon which the [US] policy is fixed.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

We have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or modern, Pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian, so terrible in its character, as the slavery which exists in these United States

There are, of course, deeply sincere people of religion in different parts of the world who genuinely fight on the side of the poor, but they are usually in conflict with organised religion themselves.

If a king goes astray the common people pay for the sin.

History could claw upward as well as down. The powerful could be deafened by the cries of the poor.

The whole policy of the Cotton dynasty tends necessarily to making broader the chasm between these orders is most apparent. It makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer; for, as, according to the creed of the dynasty, capital should own labor, and the labor thus owned can alone successfully produce cotton.

In times not long gone by, the higher and richer classes were in complete possession of the government. Their power was the master grievance of the country. The habit of voting at the bidding of an employer, or of a landlord, was so firmly established, that hardly anything was capable of shaking it

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

The evils of European society were rooted in feudalism and entrenched in privilege.

Throughout the play everything possible was done to show the virtue, innocence and helplessness of the poor, and the abandoned cruelty, the heartless self-indulgence of the rich.

The evil inequities and oppression of every kind which afflict millions of men and women today openly contradict Christ's Gospel and cannot leave the conscience of any Christian indifferent.

Poverty in itself does not make men into a rabble; a rabble is created only when there is joined to poverty a disposition of mind, an inner indignation against the rich, against society, against the government.