Howard Jacobson Quotes

Everybody in politics claims to want to get everybody out of poverty. What's the opposite? Wealth. And what is often criticized by the left? Wealth.

When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed.

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

Western society has many flaws, and it is good for an educated person to have thought some of these through, even at the expense of losing a lecture or two to tear gas.

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

I say to the Occupy protesters - you're occupying the wrong place, you're protesting the wrong thing.

I think that 'Elysium' the movie is unrealistic, with the space station and everything. I think 'Elysium' the metaphor is completely realistic: it's exactly where we're going.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

Philosophers are men hired by the well-to-do to prove that everything is all right.

The social order we have built recognizes no exploitation of man by man. In our country there are no rich people to live at the expense of the workers and peasants. Just as there are no poor people living on the charity of others.

When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

The economic and technical capabilities of the established societies are sufficiently vast to allow for adjustments and concessions to the underdog.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.

We cannot rebuild the American Dream here at home by catering to the voices of the privileged and powerful.

We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.

If science has a lot to do with what works, then clearly there's much about today's social and economic setup that isn't scientific, because things aren't working very well for a majority of the world's population or the environment.

One thing that is clearly not maximized by free markets is equality. I am talking not about that pale substitute for equality known as equality of opportunity but about equality itself.

I've always thought that there are many things still left in society that are detached from the sense of ordinary people. I won't overlook them and I will determine what is right before taking bold action.

I do worry about a world in which the rich get to write the rules.