W.E.B. Du Bois

Work is service, not gain. The object of work is life, not income. The reward of production is plenty, not private fortune. We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.

Friedrich Engels

The bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but makes a bargain with the poor, saying: ‘If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery.’

Hamilton Nolan - Everyone Into The Grinder

Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves.

Albert Einstein

Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Will Rogers

Ten men in our country could buy the World, and ten million can't buy enough to eat.

And income inequality in America has only gotten worse in the past 92 years

Harry Truman (1952)

Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people.

Erich Fromm

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

Erich Fromm

As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask.

Voltaire

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

Mark Fisher

Observing humans under capitalism and concluding it's only in our nature to be greedy is like observing humans under water and concluding it's only in our nature to drown.