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Rich Quotes

“I was very much an only child who was raised by the television and movies, and I grew up in New York. We weren't, like, rich people, but we were middle-class people and my parents supported this love I had for entertainment.”

People Children Parent Class Rich Middle New York Television Grew Grew Up Raised Entertainment Middle Class Rich People Only Child

Author:Billy Eichner

“Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you're not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You're basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich.”

People Ifs Needs Helping Wanted School Poor Class Rich Cutting Middle Taxes Middle Class Wealthy Healthcare Infrastructure Helping People Tax Cuts Robbing

Author:Robert Reich

“Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.”

Needs Values Grows Class Virtue Rich Exercise Labor Dignity Importance Idle Eloquent Thrift Harps

Author:Oscar Wilde

“Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.”

Class Rich Riches

Author:John Kenneth Galbraith

“The ruling class is the rich. . . . And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.”

People Able Political Class Democracy Rich Ruling Manipulate

Author:Walter Cronkite

“Does not the whole history of socialism, particularly of French socialism, which is so rich in revolutionary striving, show us that when the working people themselves take power in their hands the ruling classes resort to unheard-of crimes and shootings if it is a matter of protecting their money-bags.”

People Ifs Doe Matter Whole Shows Hands Class Rich Crime Strive Socialism Shooting Revolutionary Bags Ruling Resorts Unheard

Author:Vladimir Lenin

“We don`t have a manufacturing base. We don`t have a middle-class jobs growing at all. All we have is a few rich people and a service industry to service them.”

People Jobs Class Rich Growing Middle Industry Middle Class Rich People Manufacturing Service Industry

Author:Chris Hayes

“The workmen's revolution, with the terrors of destruction and murder, not only threatens us, but we have already been living upon its verge during the last thirty years, and it is only by various cunning devices that we have been postponing the crisis. The hatred and contempt of the oppressed people are increasing, and the physical and moral strength of the richer classes are decreasing: the deceit which supports all this is wearing out, and the rich classes have nothing wherewith to comfort themselves.”

“BRAZILIFICATION:The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes.”

Poor Class Rich Middle Middle Class Disappearance

Author:Douglas Coupland

“I don't believe there is one woman within the confines of this state who does not believe in birth control. I never met one. That is, I never met one who thought that she should be kept in ignorance of contraceptive methods. Many I have met who valued the knowledge they possessed, but thought there were certain other classes who would be better kept in ignorance. The old would protect the young. The rich would keep the poor in ignorance. The good would keep their knowledge from the bad, the strong from the weak.”

Source: Crystal Eastman on women and revolution

“A high proportion of the population enjoys many of the 'luxuries' which until recently were considered the prerogative of the rich; and the ordinary worker lives at what even two decades ago would have been considered in Britain a middle-class standard of life.”

Has Beens Two Enjoy Class Rich Middle Standards Ordinary Workers Population Decades Luxury Proportion Britain Middle Class Prerogative

Author:Anthony Crosland

“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.”

Thinking Has Beens War Fighting Poor Class Rich Fighting Back

Author:Naomi Klein

“For all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.”

People World Children War Today Dies Found Born Chance Poor Class Study Rich Moved Determine British War Of The Worlds Britain Second World War Chatter Poor Family Rich Family

Author:Johann Hari

“The greatest trick the rich - and their cheerleaders on the right - ever pulled was convincing the world that class didn't exist. Out here in the real world, it is more real and more rigid than it has been for a century.”

World Has Beens Real Class Rich Century Tricks Real World Convincing Cheerleader

Author:Johann Hari

“The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America's middle class. Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great!”

Needs Years Hard America Class Economy Rich Middle Hard Work Shots Experiments Corporations Giants Middle Class Lobbyists Trickle Down

Author:Elizabeth Warren

“While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.”

Ends Fighting Poor Class Break Struggle Rich Middle Taxes Extraordinary Middle Class Afghanistan Tax Breaks Mega

Author:Warren Buffett

“After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people.”

People Men Giving Mean Long Whole Water Class Forever Rich Air He Man Exercise Please Property Accidents Lists Plenty Gentleman Etc Dirt Superiority Rags Workmen Ulysses

Author:Charles Kingsley

“Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of 'traditional values' installed. ... the poor and the middle class were shaken down, and their loose change funneled blithely upwards to the already overfed.”

Values Poor Class Rich Middle Down And Traditional Middle Class Eighty Rich And Poor Traditional Values Loose Change

Author:Barbara Ehrenreich

“a great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor. Take Wal-Mart, our largest private employer and premiere exploiter of the working class. ... You think it's a coincidence that this union-busting low-wage retail empire happens to have generated a $65 billion family fortune?”

Source: Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation

“We have a new class in this country: the deserving rich. ... The deserving rich do nice things for each other. Comforting the unafflicted is something that comes naturally to them.”

Country Wealth Class Rich Nice Comforting Deserving Nice Things New Class

Book:The Best of Mary McGrory: A Half-Century of Washington Commentary

Source: The Best of Mary McGrory: A Half-Century of Washington Commentary

“How can we accept a situation in which there are no longer orchestras, choruses, libraries or art classes to nourish our children? We need more support for the arts, not less -- particularly to make this rich world available to young people whose vision is choked by a stark reality. How many children, who have no other outlet in their lives for their grief, have found solace in an instrument to play or a canvas to paint on? When you take into consideration the development of the human heart, soul and imagination, don't the arts take on just as much importance as math or science?”

“In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.”

Humans May Poor Class Rich Middle Media Fashion Middle Class Endeavor Adopted Social Change Childbirth Filters

Author:Jessica Mitford

“The rich experience of history teaches that up to now not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class.”

Way Made Class Teach Rich

Book:1934-1940

Source: 1934-1940

“I got a flash of ... what it means, now, 'you can't be too rich or too thin.' How well it works, will keep on working, because the vast majority of women will never be thin. Thin enough. How well the hope of class mobility keeps every mother dieting, and handing the diets down to her daughter, hoping the daughter may do even better. When you combine this with the fact that many non-white peoples tend to be heavier than white folks, dieting becomes a tool not only in enforcing class but in encouraging assimilation.”

Wells May Mean Enough Facts Mother Women White Class Rich Daughter Tools Weight Majority Folks Diets Flash Assimilation Dieting Mobility

Author:Elana Dykewomon

“I fell in love with my country - its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities and people. No one can take my love of country away from me! I felt then, as I do now, it's a rich, fertile, beautiful land, capable of satisfying all the needs of its people. It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class.”

Source: The Rebel Girl: an autobiography, my first life (1906-1926).

“I didn't say one negative word about poor people or about middle-class people or anything else. All I said was that the rich deserve our gratitude.”

People Said Poor Class Rich Middle Gratitude Deserve Negative Middle Class Poor People Negative Words

Author:Bernard Goldberg

“Were all the pleasures in the world, even pure air, made solely for the rich? I think it is immoral - it is horrible! - that one man may own twenty millions of money, and another has to commit a crime to keep the life in his miserable body. And if I were wealthy, I'd be a spendthrift! It's the spendthrifts who are the real friends of the poor. Some of their money filters through to the very lowest classes.”

“By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.”

Ifs States Use Poor Class Rich Talent Youth Genius

Book:The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State

Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State

“The rich people are apparently leaving America. They're giving up their citizenship. These great lovers of America who made their money in this country-when you ask them to pay their fair share of taxes they run abroad. We have 19-year old kids who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan defending this country. They went abroad. Not to escape taxes. They're working class kids who died in wars and now billionaires want to run abroad to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. What patriotism! What love of country!”

“In Caribbean there is no middle class: you're either rich or you're poor. And the ladder to success is not really a ladder, it's a chain; once you reach a certain level, you can't go back and you can only keep going forward.”

Certain Poor Levels Class Rich Middle Chains Middle Class Keep Going Ladders Caribbean

Author:Zoe Saldana

“The world is polarized. The middle class becomes smaller. The polarization makes the difference between rich and the poor big. This is true.”

World Bigs Differences Poor Class Rich Middle Middle Class Polarization

Author:Pope Francis

“Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.”

Class Rich Working Class

Author:Paul Merton

“Men ruled the roost and women played a subservient role [in the 1960s]. Working wives were a rarity, because their place was in the home, bringing up the kids. The women who did work were treated as second-class citizens because it was a male-dominated society. That was a fact of life then. But it wouldn't be tolerated today, and that's quite right in my book... people look back on those days through a thick veil of nostalgia, but life was hard if you were anything other than a rich, powerful, white male.”

“The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.”

Behinds Class Rich Middle Fallen Middle Class

Author:William Julius Wilson

“No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitutea political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.”

“After visiting several of America's most fashionable playgrounds, I have reached the conclusion that men who work hard enjoy life most. The men at such places can be divided into two classes, first, busy men of affairs ... and, second, rich loafers. I was impressed by the obvious enjoyment corporation heads and other important executives were deriving from their vacation activities.... The idle rich fellows, on the other hand, although indulging in exactly the same activities, palpably were bored.”

“Which class is happiest, the rich, the middle class or the poor? A very successful executive of a large organization touches upon this vital subject in a long letter to all his salesmen. He uses as his text a passage from Robinson Crusoe which included this: ""My Father bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and were not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind.”

“No capitalists after any war were ever so well paid for money loaned to the nation that carried it on. No class of money-makers ever gained such prosperity by any other war, as our War for the Union brought to the money-getters of America. All this was due in great measure to the rank and file of the Union army. Now let no rich man haggle with a needy veteran of that war about his right to a pension!”

Men Wells War America Nations Class Rich Army Paid Unions Prosperity Dues Makers Capitalist Veteran Files Needy Rich Man Pension Money Maker

Author:Rutherford B. Hayes

“Derek Taylor was where all the razz-ma-tazz and class sprang from; the Beatles were just charming, rich young men.”

Men Young Class Rich Young Man Charming

Author:Eve Babitz

“Get a millionaire mentor. Most of us were brought up middle class or poor and then hold ourselves to the limits and ideas of that group. I have been studying millionaires to duplicate what they did. Get your own personal millionaire mentor and study them. Most rich people are extremely generous with their knowledge and their resources.”

People Has Beens Ideas Poor Class Study Rich Groups Middle Limits Resources Generous Middle Class Mentor Millionaire Rich People Duplicate

Author:Grant Cardone

“But colonialism in its harshest forms is not only the exploitation of new nations by old, of dark skins by light, or the subjugation of the poor by the rich. My Nation was once a colony, and we know what colonialism means; the exploitation and subjugation of the weak by the powerful, of the many by the few, of the governed who have given no consent to be governed, whatever their continent, their class, their color.”

Knows Mean Light Form Given Nations Dark Poor Powerful Class Rich Color Weak Skins Continents Colonialism Exploitation Consent Colony Subjugation Dark Skin

Author:John F. Kennedy

“When I was growing up, you were supposed to marry and therefore didn't plan ahead. Planning ahead is one of the few reliable measures of class in the sense that rich people plan for generations forward and poor people plan for Saturday night, and by that measure, women have been lower class. We were less likely to plan ahead because we're more likely to think that who we marry and our children are going to dictate our plans.”

“Certain kinds of things that the novel used to do, which was, "Oh, I'm living out here in West Nowhere, Nebraska and I'm curious how the upper class in New York City lives, I guess I'll read a novel about it." We don't have to do that now. You just turn on the TV. Turn on Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous. You can get that information anywhere. Novels don't have to do that anymore.”

Kind Used Certain Turns Cities Class Novel Rich Information New York Tvs West Lifestyle Curious New York City Turn-on City Life Upper Class Nebraska

Author:Jonathan Franzen

“"Get Rich or Die Tryin". That's the universal struggle. When I say it it might seem a bit negative but if a working class person says it it means they're determined.”

Ifs Mean Persons Seems Might Dies Bits Class Struggle Rich Negative Universal Determined Working Class Get Rich

Author:Curtis Jackson

“Khaddar delivers the poor from the bonds of the rich and creates a moral and spiritual bond between the classes and the masses.”

Spiritual Poor Moral Class Rich Mass

Book:Is India Different?: The Class Struggle in India : Correspondence on the Indian Labour Movement and Modern Conditions

Source: Is India Different?: The Class Struggle in India : Correspondence on the Indian Labour Movement and Modern Conditions

“I am a citizen of a country that has just undergone a thieved election, a country deeply and dangerously divided between rich and poor, but also between rich and middle class. What I believe in and what my government represents are not the same thing.”

Believe Country Government I Believe Poor Class Rich Middle Citizens Election I Believe In Middle Class Divided Rich And Poor

Author:Adrienne Rich

“The interesting thing about class warfare is that it's only class warfare if it's up, not down. If you talk about welfare cheats or something, that's not class warfare because it's down; you have to talk about rich people before it's class warfare.”

People Ifs Interesting Class Rich Welfare Warfare Cheat Rich People Interesting Things Class Warfare

Author:Calvin Trillin

“The education here intended in not merely that of the children of the rich and noble, but of every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and the poorest. It is not too much to say that schools for the education of all should be placed at convenient distances, and maintained at the public expense.”

People Should Children School Education Class Rich Too Much Distance Noble Expenses Lowest Convenient Poorest

Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“The indiscriminate denunciation of the rich is mischievous.... No poor man was ever made richer or happier by it. It is quite as illogical to despise a man because he is rich as because he is poor. Not what a man has, but what he is, settles his class. We can not right matters by taking from one what he has honestly acquired to bestow upon another what he has not earned.”

Men Made Matter Poor Class Rich Honestly Settling Despise Can Not Poor Man Illogical Mischievous

Book:Views of an Ex-president

Source: Views of an Ex-president

“This erosion of the middle class is happening all over the place. The opening of a wider gap between rich and poor is always accompanied by such a process.”

Process Poor Class Rich Middle Happenings Opening Middle Class Gaps Rich And Poor Erosion

Author:Susan George