Count of Berlaymont Quotes

Occupy Wall Street was a disorganized movement without a clear focus and power base - essential in any successful revolution - but the message was clear: the divisions between those who are fortunate enough to enjoy city living as opposed to those who find it unbearable are too wide.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience.

I have been unsure, from the start, what the Occupy movement was all about, although I did suspect that it was just fatuous, anti-enterprise, left-wingery.

No city in Italy contains so many miserable beggars, and no town in the world so many blind.

These days many politicians are demanding change. Just like homeless people.

Class was always the domestic issue during the Vietnam War, not communism.

I've always thought that the level of homelessness in society is likely to be a truer measure of how civilised we are then almost any other factor.

Urbanisation, poverty, youth unemployment are leading to violence-prone cities.

If I cannot address the issue of visible homelessness and abject poverty on the streets of this community, I will not get re-elected in four years.

People are rejecting the power of the elite, but individuals such as Snowden are doing so in a positive way, trying to change things for the better. He is a very intelligent man and obviously interested in electronic music.

I think, for me, the biggest issue is poverty in general, poverty in this time of plenty. It's reflected in homelessness. It's reflected in educational gaps. It's reflected in racial disparities.

It's really obvious that we have very serious inequality in this country across many different spectrums. Yes, we can talk about the form of protest or the way it's done or this or that. But it's still not really the conversation that I think we desperately need to have more of in this country.

If the impoverishment and community fragmentation continue, it is not a stretch to predict urban wars sparked by inequality, unemployment, and the breakdown of dialogue between leaders and citizens.

Food banks have become such a powerful symbol in part because they're inescapable.

Stark inequality, poverty, and unemployment are driving increased social unrest and, consequently, social and economic risk. Environmental deterioration may well intensify social inequality.

If all we've got is the dirt poor and the filthy rich, the dirt poor would eat the filthy rich.

I've always been a big supporter of homeless charities across the board, ever since I first moved to London.

It is true that food banks are a sign that the British retain their altruistic instincts. I support my local food banks whenever and however I can. But I am deeply concerned about their normalisation.

As recognized since ancient times, the coexistence of very rich and very poor leads to two possibilities, neither a happy one. The rich can rule alone, disenfranchising or even enslaving the poor, or the poor can rise up and confiscate the wealth of the rich.

The Government should be taking notice of the youth of today so much more. They're trying to keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor. If I sat down with David Cameron in a room, I would ask him how he feels about it and what the hell he's doing about it.

I consider the homeless just as important as the richest of the rich.

When the mayor of Sao Paulo wanted to increase bus fare by 21 centavos in 2013, the country erupted in the largest mass protests in its history. It wasn't a dramatic hike - just nine cents - but a perfect symbol of the increasing burdens on the working poor, forced to fend with an inadequate system, insensitive to their plight.

While economic development [in Egypt] made a few people rich, it left many more worse off. As people felt less and less free, they also felt less and less provided for.

[On her father, Ronald Reagan:] How do you argue with someone who states that the people who are sleeping on the grates of the streets of America 'are homeless by choice'?

The nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain.