"Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William S. Smith. Paris, Nov. 13, 1787. It’s interesting to note that Jefferson was President 20 years after the revolution (and this letter, both) and made no such calls for rebellion, and instead took more interest in trying to repair misconceptions from newspapers, as he saw them.
"A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times—you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you."
- Jack London, The Iron Heel, 1906.
“And maybe officials are right to be afraid [to take tough action], given the massive size of the banks in question relative to the economy. In fact, those banks are bigger now than they were before the crisis, and, as James Kwak and I documented at length in our book 13 Bankers, they are much larger than they were 20 years ago.”
“The press never shows you photos like this. To the world, the press reveals young masked people in black confronting riot police. To the rest of us, we see drums, and banners, people of all ages, races, ethnicities and sexual orientations, bicyclists, roller boarders, flag wavers, chant leaders, those who bang on drums and those (like me) whose eardrums like to stay far enough away from them.”
"We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and author. The Guardian, November 20th, 1991.
“Let’s build a government that serves the interest of property owners. We’ll fight on their behalf against their oppressors, for promises of trinkets, fine speeches, and honest work. One that keeps all women, all non-whites, and poor whites outside the power structure as much as possible….”
This is what defending the status quo looks like a century later. This is not rocking the boat because making things better is hard and frightening.