Helen Gahagan Quotes

Our democracies are increasingly captured by a ruling class that seeks to perpetuate its privileges.

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

Are we prepared to take on the enormous political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.

Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction block, subject to the highest bidder.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.

The fear is that we'll move in the direction from being a democracy to an oligarchy.

It's this mingling of the economic and political elite which is really destroying our democracy.

Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

It means that, in fact, it's - whether fascist is the right word I don't know - more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

It is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy.

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

This is what oligarchy looks like: Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The top one-hundredth of 1 percent makes more than 40 percent of all campaign contributions. The billionaire class owns the political system and reaps the benefits from it.

If you continue to transfer the wealth of the population of the planet to a very small amount of people, it becomes untenable at some point, a democracy, because people eventually will realize what's going on. You can only bulls - t people through kinds of media outlets for so long, and eventually you have to physically control them.

The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

The oligarchs think that the people are both dangerous and stupid. Their point is moot. But we do know that the oligarchs are a good deal more dangerous to the polity than the people at large.

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

Plainly elites in America don't want democracy. And why should they? Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

You don't have any vestige of democracy in this country. A report recently came out of Princeton University claiming that, of all the policies that have been made in the last thirty years, 95% of them were in the interest of the rich and had nothing to do with what people wanted - basic services, roads, all of that. They called it an oligarchy.

I think what the American people are saying is enough is enough. This country, this great country, belongs to all of us. It cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of billionaires who apparently want it all.

A tiny portion of the population controls the lions share of the wealth and most of the command positions of state, manufacturing, banking, investment, publishing, higher education, philanthropy, and media... these individuals exercise a preponderant influence over what is passed off as public information and democratic discourse.

In many respects, this country is becoming an oligarchy, with a tiny percentage of America owning the media, owning the country.