Pankaj Mishra Quotes

Resentment — that feeling when the modern promise of equality collides with massive disparities of power, education, status and property ownership.

Of the 1 Percent. By the 1 Percent. For the 1 Percent.

Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

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.

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

The Privileged and the People form Two Nations.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Oligarchic societies may be able to achieve high rates of growth for a period of time, but continuing inequities in distribution lead to political instability and populism.

… in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

Surrounded by the evidence of their success, the wealthy come to believe that they are fundamentally better than other Americans and that working people deserve their declining fortunes. They trumpet meritocracy while ensuring that their children enjoy crushing advantages from birth. They have unprecedented access to politicians and use it to push policies that swell their wealth while defunding institutions, such as public education, that sustain opportunities for less-fortunate Americans.

Ordinary people understand that the rich and powerful bully the poor and meek.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

The rich stick together; the poor and the marginalised are thrown together.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

As a Londoner I was able to see how the world of power and money cast its shadow on those who failed.

The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.