Samuel Johnson Quotes

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

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.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

The middle class is always a firm champion of equality when it concerns a class above it; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it.

We have been taught by experience the danger of the levelling spirit.

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.

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

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants hall.

There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way.

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many.

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.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

Our democracy may have an aristocracy of talent, as Jefferson said – which is fine – but we don’t want everyone else to be left out. Something like that seems to be happening, though.

If you try and level society, then nobody will do anything.

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

Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

Income inequality is not a bad thing. Income inequality is a good thing.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Champagne Socialist