Yquotes.com

 

One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and the unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.
--
Ch. 24

 

Howard Zinn

» Howard Zinn - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Everyone recognized that only five percent of all the people born ever amount to anything at all. Everyone humbly thanked his providential stars that through his own personal efforts and merit he had become one of the superior five percent. Everyone looked with pity and contempt upon the ninety-five percent who did not share his grace.

 

Mark Clifton

 

Chomsky pointed out after 9/11 that the US has also committed atrocities, some quite recently. His critics reply that this was in poor taste. Whether there is a grain (or a bushel) of truth in these criticisms, you’ll have to decide for yourself. I’m too much of a partisan to pronounce. But even if you decide to toss out 25 percent or 50 percent or 75 percent of Chomsky’s charges against American foreign policy, that still leaves quite a tidy pile of unnecessary suffering that the United States is responsible for. And it’s your country.

 

Noam Chomsky

 

If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

 

Denis Diderot

 

I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.

 

Thomas Babington Macaulay

 

I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, 'Horrible three-way civil war?'

 

Molly Ivins