Top 108 Quotes & Sayings by Owen Jones - Page 2

A sneer can often reveal far more about the sneerer than the object of their derision.

Neoliberalism has left Britain's boss classes drunk on triumphalism, paying themselves record salaries and bonuses while their workers are imprisoned by poverty and insecurity. It was never going to last.

Almost all human beings have the capacity for empathy. Everyone has the potential to be at least troubled, or feel genuine anguish, about the suffering of other human beings.

For decades, life expectancy steadily rose in Britain: and then, suddenly, just as the Tories took power and imposed austerity, this improvement ground to a halt.

A party committed to defending the economic interests of rich elites could never win by saying so.

If you live in London, where politicians and media commentators spend most of their time, you are spoilt for transport choices - trains, an extensive underground network and a regular bus service.

Political linguists have argued that the right often uses stories to make an argument, while the left falls back on facts and statistics.

In the hyper-exploitative sector of retail and hospitality, workers are made to feel worthless - undeserving of a proper wage and genuine security.

Democracy is a bundle of rights and freedoms wrestled from the powerful. Our rulers only surrender their power when compelled to - when the cost of resisting pressure from below becomes greater than the cost of giving ground to it.

Our social model means economic growth all too often involves concentrating wealth produced by the many into the bank accounts of the few, without improving the lives of the majority.

Austerity is literally a matter of life and death. Unless it is stopped, lives will continue to be unnecessarily shortened.

We recognise that, like us, other humans have insecurities and ambitions; we fall in love and have relationships that end in heartbreak; we worry about our children's wellbeing; we say things we regret; we're occasionally kept awake by fears or worries; and we try to impress people we look up to.

In the 1980s, the trade unions suffered a series of calamitous setbacks. Mass unemployment terrified workers into not risking the wrath of bosses. Repressive anti-union laws stunted the ability of workers to organise and defend their rights.

Who can begrudge the generosity of the wealthy, you might say. Wherever you stand on the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny global elite, surely such charity should be applauded? But philanthropy is a dangerous substitution for progressive taxation.

One of the greatest own goals in modern British political history helped create one of the biggest political parties in the western world, but one committed to socialism rather than rehashed Blairite triangulation.

Labour's mission is to democratise Britain: but first, it must surely democratise itself.

The liberation of workers from excessive work was one of the pioneering demands of the labour movement.

Yes, there is some evidence that migration can slightly depress wages at the bottom end of the labour market, but that's an argument for a genuine living wage, for ensuring all workers are employed on the same terms and conditions, and for extending unionisation.

But cutting the working week would free the individual, giving millions of workers more time to spend as they see fit. Human freedom should be the core aim of modern socialism. The right to work less would be an act of liberation - and a cause the left should embrace.

We need global tax justice, not charitable scraps dictated by the fancies of the elite.

But a rejection of freedom of movement within Europe's own boundaries does not strengthen the case for accepting more migrants and refugees from outside: the reverse, in fact.

Britain's unions were broken and battered by Thatcherism and never recovered.

The Tories have built a system defined by insecurity - from wages to job contracts to housing to the welfare state. If they want to understand why socialism - long dead, never coming back, or so they thought - has undergone a revival, this is why.

Genuine democracy is frequently messy, not stage-managed.

Socialism is the democratisation of every level of society, or it is nothing. It is based on an understanding that the concentration of wealth and power leaves democracy hollowed out, and that simply trooping to a polling station every few years is an insufficient counterweight to the behemoths of global capital.

Britain's police force is institutionally racist. This was the judgement of the 1999 Macpherson report, and it remains the case.

Restoring our shared humanity isn't easy, not least because powerful interests - from media outlets to politicians - relentlessly seek to undermine it. But it is the only hope for a troubled world.

If only Brexit would go away. It sucks the political oxygen away from the issues we should all be discussing: like low wages, insecure jobs and the housing crisis.

Grief is like wandering through a minefield, as my mother puts it: however carefully you tread, a sudden detonation can happen out of nowhere. A song played in a supermarket; an overheard phrase; someone in the distance who your mind cruelly suggests is your loved one for a fleeting moment.

If you've never lived outside London, and if you've always had a car, it's difficult to understand how dire bus services undermine your standard of living: from being able to get to work, meet friends in the pub, get the weekly shop or take the kids on a day out.

My dad saw himself as part of a historic struggle for human liberation: he met my mum canvassing for the Labour party in a snowstorm in Tooting, he helped lead strikes, and recruited miners to socialism.

The bereaved are often treated badly. There is no statutory paid bereavement leave, with the emotionally stunned often compelled to work within days of losing a loved one.

Turkey's regime is fast degenerating into outright dictatorship, emboldened by the imminent ascent of Donald Trump to the most powerful position on Earth.

Having some form of structure to process and manage grief collectively surely helps: as someone put it to me, grief is like a landscape without a map. Another suggested that grief makes you a stranger to yourself.

A huge portion of our lives involves the surrender of our freedom and personal autonomy. It is time in which we are directed by the needs and whims of others, and denied the right to make our own choices.

The decision on how philanthropic money is spent is made on the whims and personal interests of the wealthy, rather than what is best.

So much of our lives is surrendered to subordinating ourselves to the needs and whims of others, turning human beings into cash cows rather than independent, well-rounded individuals.

Increased public ownership of the economy should be structured to create more worker self-management and control.

Yes, we need action to deal with online hatred and abuse. But let's make sure there are clear safeguards, or history will repeat itself, and peaceful opponents of an unjust status quo will suffer the consequences.

My passionate belief is in the role of movements to achieve political power to transform society. In this country, we talk about the Labour movement, of which the Labour Party is the wing of government for the interests of people we were set up to champion.

It is a bad situation, the current state of the Labour leadership, a collective failure, the collapse of strategy and vision on all sides.

We live in an age where in politics, people can't disagree with each other without good faith being questioned, there is always an ulterior motive - in it for the money, advance a career.

We live in a country where there is a lot of animosity. If your politics is radical it antagonises. People might think I am overconfident. I look petulant when I stand my ground.

I am part of the left; I feel loyal. I don't want to do things that will be damaging to what I believe in.

We bar girls don't cheat on wives, we are just the rope that cheating husbands hang themselves with.

When Art struggles, it succeeds; when revelling in its own successes, it as singularly fails.

Demonisation is the ideological backbone of an unequal society.

Dieting is long-haul. Many rapid weight loss programs actually only squeeze the water out of you. Just like a wet sponge. But a good dieter maintains his or her grip on that sponge, not letting it soak up water again.