A Quote by Zephyr Teachout

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

Zephyr Teachout

Quote Topics

American American Tradition Because Concentrated Corrupt Corrupt Government Democracy Economic Economic Power Government Long Plutocracy Power Suspicion Tendency Tradition Turn

Quote Author

Zephyr Teachout
American - Lawyer
Born: October 24, 1971

Our society will always remain an unstable and explosive compound as long as political power is vested in the masses and economic power in the classes. In the end one of these powers will rule. Either the plutocracy will buy up the democracy, or the democracy will vote away the plutocracy.

Irving Fisher

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

Ronald Reagan

The clinical definition of "fascism" is when private concentrated economic power takes government away from the people, turns government into a guarantor, a subsidizer, a covering of corporate power.

Ralph Nader

The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.

Robert Zubrin

We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstandin g and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.

Ramsey Clark

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.

Aldous Huxley

The word "democracy" is a Western word obviously. It doesn't exist in Arabic. Democratiya is a loan word. We in the Western world make the great mistake of assuming that ours is the only form of good government; that democracy means what it means in the Anglo-American world and a few other places in the West, but not many others. Muslims have their own tradition on limited government. Now in Islam, there is a very strong political tradition. Because the different circumstances, Islam is political from the very beginning.

Bernard Lewis

In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.

Theodore Roosevelt

Democracy is just a word. You have to give it meaning. The US is not a democracy. Most Americans do not vote. We haven't had a real choice for a long, long time now. Wealth rules. Corporations rule. The US is a plutocracy - government by wealthy people. Certain people control multinational corporations. You couldn't get elected in the US without lots of money.

Ramsey Clark

Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent.

Ronald Reagan

There's this proud American tradition of worrying about the power of communication companies. That going all the way back to the founding, we've tried to limit the power of monopolies that played a role in our democracy.

Franklin Foer

My movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt - now, when I say "corrupt," I'm talking about totally corrupt - political establishment, with a new government controlled by you, the American people.

Donald Trump

[G]overnment can, instead of extending freedom, restrict freedom. And note ... that the 'can' quickly becomes 'will' the moment the holders of government power are left to their own devices. This is because of the corrupting influence of power, the natural tendency of men who possess some power to take unto themselves more power. The tendency leads eventually to the acquisition of all power - whether in the hands of one or many makes little difference to the freedom of those left on the outside.

Barry Goldwater

Everything is un-American that tends either to government by a plutocracy or government by a mob. To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American. All privileges based on wealth, and all enmity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American-both of them equally so. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Theodore Roosevelt

My political tradition is on the left, but I think that more modern leftists, they sometimes get stuck with this vision of large government and social benefits and everything and that's against what is my position, because I think that the ultimate vision of Marx, Engels, and those people was to eliminate government entities and to give as much power to the people. And in modern standing that means direct democracy, that means all the power to the communities, it means gradually eliminating all government oppression on the society. And 100 years ago, leftists' major allies were labor unions.