One Percent Quotes

“Smart people, like himself, who had acquired money and power weren’t nice because they had learned that caring about and helping others made them exposed and vulnerable, which led to failure. One had to look out for number one to get “the money” and “the power” the cabbie spoke of. Dale knew that money and power were finite. They were limited resources you couldn’t simply spread around the world for everyone to enjoy. Crafty, competitive people knew this and fought hard to get their share of it. People like the cabbie were naïve enough to think everyone would be happy sharing an equal amount of the pie. They lived in a fantasy world that socialism and communism touted. If the pie had been equally divided to everyone in the world, each person would hold a tiny sliver after the distribution was complete. Then everyone would be miserable and all those naïve people who had fought to make it happen would finally learn what they already knew—life was miserable with only a sliver of the pie.
Of course the cabbie had suicidal thoughts and dreamed about shit towers piling high up into the sky; he was one of the caring people who had tried so hard to become another tile on the floor under the feet of cunning people, like himself, who were moving toward success by walking upon the altruistic pathway naïve people had constructed out of themselves. And that was more than fine with Dale. The greater number of people who thought like the cabbie the better, because it made it easier for people like himself to snatch up a bigger piece of the pie.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“You can’t write novels without a touch of paranoia. I’m paranoid as an act of good citizenship, concerned about what the powerful people are up to.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninety-nine people who don't know what they are doing. They're involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling.”
― John Cage, M: Writings '67–'72

“Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migration, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

“Turn thy crown upside down! You need to feel how it is to kneel as those less fortunate than your noble deal.”
― Stanley Victor Paskavich, Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries

“They only let us live in millions for the sake of the economy. I don't know what will happen by the time they figure out how to run the economy without the people”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom

“The perpetual growth model is simply not built for an era of rapid planetary change. In a world where the richest 85 people in the world own as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion, and the wealthiest 10% produce 49% of all emissions, it’s not individual choices that are driving climate change. When we realize that rich people have stolen our planet’s habitability for themselves, we will demand revolutionary change.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“Fascist propaganda demonizes minorities, to brainwash the working class.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America

“If you dangle in front of parents the kind of 1 percent life outcome that goes with being a star, some of them will grab for it, even if objectively it’s not a very good plan for their child’s long-term wellbeing. Once a parent hears that their kid might have potential - as a painter, a dancer, a tennis player, a musician, whatever - all the stories of struggling artists and washed up athletes fade to the background.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials