Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Quotes

Middle-class democracy has proved the best camouflage of the political dominance of big capital.

You need just the right amount of protection for the rich under democracy: too little and the elite will not agree to democracy; too much and the poor will go ahead and have the revolution...

The few who understand the system [of banking with capitalism] will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power, the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority.

Inequality [is] a social control mechanism supported by financial interests’ belief in the desirability of oligarchy.

Political struggles are due, in the last analysis, to class struggles; these struggles increase in scope and seriousness as capital becomes concentrated …

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth.

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

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.

There is here, as in all countries, advantages and disadvantages.

There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy.

The biggest lie of all is that capitalism is democracy. We have no way of understanding democracy outside of the market, just as we have no understanding of how to understand freedom outside of market values.

American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively few very wealthy people and very few very poor people, but that is gone to today and the middle class is shrinking.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.

We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Rich men belong to another nationality entirely, no matter what their actual nationality happens to be. The nationality of the rich.

If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning.

The capitalist society is very disorderly. The variance is great and may be on the basis of ability, luck, all sorts of happenstance, external circumstances. That upsets people's sense of order.

It’s no surprise that a global economy creates a global class conflict…. All markets create classes and class conflicts.

No one should have more than five times the wealth of the poorest person.