The Rich and the Rest of Us Quotes

“In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. --Aristotle”
― Cornel West, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto

“The Poverty Tour provided the opportunity to meet many people who had been living paycheck to paycheck even before the economic downturn. To so quickly slide from the great middle into the underworld of the poor validated our suspicions that perhaps these citizens never really were bona fide, middle class Americans. Indeed, some economists assert that the middle class evaporated decades ago.”
― Cornel West, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto

“True democracy focuses on the public interest; it defends the common good and protects its citizens - especially the weak and the vulnerable. We maintain that no democracy can survive without the powerful notions of compassion and public service. The level of wealth inequality in this country has gotten so far out of hand, the quantity of compassion so diminished, that the very future of democracy is at stake." ― & Cornel West”
― Tavis Smiley, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto

“Poverty is not the stepchild of the Great Recession; poverty has always been a part of American life.”
― Tavis Smiley, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto

“battered”
― Tavis Smiley, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto