Political Inequality Quotes

I don’t deny that Cuba poverty exists, but at least the peasants there have an illusion of progress, whereas the Bolivian lives without hope.

In my experience, only third-rate intelligence is sent to Legislatures to make laws, because the first-rate article will not leave important private interests go unwatched to go and serve the public for a beggarly four or five dollars a day, and a miserably trivial distinction

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

Many of Israel's Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line - a pain they feel the state of Israel is responsible for.

Certainly let the black man have the franchise on the same terms as the white man, but while a Kaffir may make as good a Prime Minister as Lord Beaconsfield, for at least the next hundred years we shall not choose to be ruled by him.

You will be put under the heel of a majority which, if greater than you in numbers, is most undoubtedly inferior to you in political knowledge and experience …. You the wealthy, the orderly, the industrious, the enterprising portion of Ireland are to supply money for the that part of Ireland which is less orderly, less industrious, less enterprising and less law-abiding …

A world where Congressmen spend 30 to 70 percent of their time raising money from a tiny, tiny fraction of the 1% is a world where that tiny, tiny fraction has enormous power. And it's that inequality in political power that enables this corrupted system to happen.

What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? But once freed, could they be made politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit this.

I think a reason that a lot of people feel politically paralysed is that it used to be clear how power was organised. But those who have their hands on the levers of popular culture today have great power - and it isn't even clear who they are.

Protecting space for civil society and citizenry is particularly critical in a world marked by rising political and economic inequality.

Washington, DC does not have to live with much of what they produce legislatively for us.

One Representative to thirty thousand inhabitants is a very inadequate representation…

The reason that minorities and women don't have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

Bad politics tends to drive out good politics, just as bad money drives out good money.

We got a lot of politicians up there on Capital Hill. Ain't it funny how they prosper while the country stands still?

In the last presidential election Obama and Romney raised about $1 billion each. The Koch brothers, the second wealthiest family in America, now say they will raise nearly $1 billion for the 2016 elections. When one family can raise as much as an entire party, the system is broken. This is oligarchy, not democracy. We must overturn Citizens United.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

I'm against bureaucratization, corruption, seeing the same people in power.

'I can't get no satisfaction,' in political terms, has haunted Hungarian politics for 20 years.

The political system is broke. It doesn't matter who the leader is if you are frozen in time and your hands are tied. Social media is so strong that minority groups get a huge say.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

We do not yet have a politics that is equal to the economics around us.

The fact that policies often fail for no good reason is annoying but less depressing than the view that it is a big conspiracy against the poor… Name your favorite enemy… capitalism, corruption … Our view is easier. You think hard about the problems and you can solve them.