Benjamin William Arnett Quotes

For some reason, voters can be brainwashed, and they vote sometimes against their own best interests, let alone voting against the interests of people who need them, like people who are disenfranchised and people who are poor and so forth.

The whites, who are educated and civilized, swindle me, and I am not hard to swindle because I do not know how to read and write.

In a state of poverty, illiteracy, people just remain exposed to all kinds of manipulation. That's what we have lived. It's easier to tell a poor person, 'You know what, you are poor, you're hungry because the other one has taken away your rights.'

The extremely wealthy have disproportionate influence on policies that impact us all. This corrupts our politics and leads to poorer people being denied the economic opportunity to flourish in life.

As a child I experienced firsthand the severe effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially upon women and children. My parents taught me the importance of education and that it was a key to improving an individual's life.

The thing that makes reading and writing suspect in the eyes of the market economy is that it's not corrupted.

Promoting education is an effort that is close to my heart. Illiteracy contributes to poverty; encouraging children to pick up a book is fundamental.

Populism is not a style, it's a people's rebellion against the iron grip that big corporations have on our country - including our economy, government, media, and environment.

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.

People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they're right. The system is rigged.

Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.

We have no standard by which to measure the disaster that may be brought upon us by ignorance and vice in the citizens when joined to corruption and fraud in the suffrage.

The biggest drawback to democracy, he explained, is that elected representatives may not consider good governance their objective and may seek to usurp the electoral process in order to satisfy their own interests—and this unfortunately tarnishes the democratic ideal.

The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.

The American People got fucked. Then tell 'em the American Family got fucked.

No child should graduate from high school with a diploma he or she can’t read.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.

They’ve stolen everything—our lives, history and now the elections. But we will not allow them to do this. This time we have caught him with his hand in our pocket.

The policy of rewarding those who learn to read and write by giving them a chance to vote remain in operation in New England for many years as an influence tending to reduce illiteracy

The people are getting screwed In this country.

As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed.

Poor people are too stupid to know they're just chess pieces in a game.

High levels of economic inequality lead to imbalances in political power, as those at the top use their economic weight to shape our politics in ways that give them more economic power.

Democracy is becoming collateral damage in a world where global risks have been ignored or exacerbated by those with the power to act.

Trump is part of the reason you are suffering. Trump is the one playing on the not-so-level playing field where he wins and you lose.