The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.

I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money [not for purpose or passion]- has turned himself into a slave.

Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.

the business that was supposed to free him from the limitations of working for somebody else actually enslaves him. Suddenly the job he knew how to do so well becomes one job he knows how to do plus a dozen others he doesn’t know how to do at all.

The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.

The ruling classes constantly were enervated by the surfeit of goods and pleasures they had so ruthlessly monopolized for themselves. They had lapsed, too many of these insolent rulers and their agents, from a human to a distinctly simian level: like the apes, they snatched food for themselves, instead of sharing it with the group: like them, the more powerful claimed more than their share of women: like them, again, they were in a constant state of nettled aggression towards possible rivals. In short, they had alienated themselves from their distinctly human potentialities and in that sense, the real gains in power and wealth had led to a dead end: they produced no equivalent wealth of mind.

Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many.

What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant ''well-being,'' and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.

The more we have the less we own.

the oppressive government of the rich.

"So long as millions of human beings in every country had to sell their labour-power to a small minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if they could find no buyers, the so-called "equality before the law" remains merely a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no talk of a "right over one's own person," for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if he does not want to starve."

I don't think people realise how the establishment became established. It simply stole the land and property off the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.

It is one of the great tragedies of our time that the masses have come to believe that they have reached their high standard of material welfare as a result of having pulled down the wealthy, and to fear that the preservation or emergence of such a class would deprive them of something they would otherwise get and which they regard as their due. We have seen why in a progressive society there is little reason to believe that the wealth which the few enjoy would exist at all if they were not allowed to enjoy it. It is neither taken from the rest nor withheld from them. It is the fi rst sign of a new way of living begun by the advance guard. True, those who have this privilege of displaying possibilities which only the children or grandchildren of others will enjoy are not generally the most meritorious individuals but simply those who have been placed by chance in their envied position. But this fact is inseparable from the process of growth, which always goes further than any one man or group of men can foresee. To prevent some from enjoying certain advantages fi rst may well prevent the rest of us from ever enjoying them. If through envy we make certain exceptional kinds of life impossible, we shall all in the end suffer material and spiritual impoverishment. Nor can we eliminate the unpleasant manifestations of individual success without destroying at the same time those forces which make advance possible. One may share to the full the distaste for the ostentation, the bad taste, and the wastefulness of many of the new rich and yet recognize that, if we were to prevent all that we disliked, the unforeseen good things that might be thus prevented would probably outweigh the bad. A world in which the majority could prevent the appearance of all that they did not like would be a stagnant and probably a declining world.

If I cherish my body, I make a slave of myself, if I cherish my property, I make a slave of myself; [24] because I’ve disclosed the means to make me captive.