“Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.”
—Plato, Greek philosopher and economist, 427–347 B.C.E.
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
—Plutarch, Greco-Roman historian, 46–120 C.E.
“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
—Matthew 19:21–24
“Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.”
—Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776)
“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”
—Adam Smith, father of market economics,
1723–1790, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
“The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes.”
—Noah Webster, American editor, 1758–1843
“No person, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No person ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the others all skin and bone.”
—Henry George, American reformer, 1839–1897
“The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.”
—Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president, 1858–1919
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
—Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice, 1856–1941
“The preferential treatment that the rich get from the government came into sharp focus with the compensation for the families of the victims of the 9/11 attack. Wealthy families received substantially higher compensations than poor families did, even though the former were better equipped to absorb the loss than the latter. It is clear that what’s missing is a principle that would govern the redistribution of income by the government. Without it, the government spends taxes to shore up the existing distribution of income, no matter how unequal it is.”
—Moshe Adler, American economist, 1948–
“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”
—Pope Francis I, 1936–
“Poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
—Nelson Mandela, 1918–2013
“The distribution of wealth is not determined by nature. It is determined by policy.”
—Eric Schneiderman, New York State attorney general, 1954–
“American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created.”
—Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist, 1943–