-Russell Brand
(more…)Inequality
908 – Charles Bukowski and the Lack of Ambition
“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
-Charles Bukowski
(more…)815 – President Andrew Johnson on the United State Government
“Our Government springs from and was made for the people — not the people for the Government. To them it owes allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom. But while the Government is thus bound to defer to the people, from whom it derives its existence, it should, from the very consideration of its origin, be strong in its power of resistance to the establishment of inequalities. Monopolies, perpetuities, and class legislation are contrary to the genius of free government, and ought not to be allowed. Here there is no room for favored classes or monopolies; the principle of our Government is that of equal laws and freedom of industry. Wherever monopoly attains a foothold, it is sure to be a source of danger, discord, and trouble.”
–Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States of America (more…)
783 – James Madison on Factionalism and Partisanship
“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society.”
–James Madison, 4th President of the United States of America
620 – “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
–Nick Carraway’s Father in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
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563 – Quote from “Social Justice and the Emerging New Age”
“There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize — I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to — segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr
442 – Simple Truths Message
“Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.”
–Franklin D Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States of America
426 – “I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists. Could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?”
–Ellen Page
337 – “[Capitalism is] remarkably resilient and can be traced to a process [called] ‘cheapness.’ … Seven ‘things,’ [which] aren’t physical objects as much as they are a hidden social, ecological and economic infrastructure: nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives. [Where] cheapness is a process of responding to economic crises by devaluing each of those [structures] so that capitalism can continue to concentrate wealth in the hands of the already-wealthy…. Capitalism values cheapness above all else.”
–Chris Winters
He was discussing Jason W Moore and Raj Patel’s book The History of the World in Seven Cheap Things with Raj Patel (more…)
311 – “In this land of ‘milk and honey,’ the ‘almighty dollar’ rules supreme and is being upheld by the faithful troops who move without question in the name of ‘law and order.’ Only in this garden of hypocrisy and inequality can a murderer not be considered a murderer—only here can innocent people be charged with a crime and be taken to court with the confessed criminal testifying against them. Incredible?”
–unknown
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