#Social Critique Quotes

“Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail, And say there is no sin but to be rich; And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say there is no vice but beggary”

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is a fateful fatalistic apathy.”

“Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, aman of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity.”

“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”

“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition”

“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”

“There is nothing so annoying as a good example!!”

“When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic.”

“The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,-one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.”

“If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world.”

“It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.”

“Beauty has been stolen from the people and is being sold back to them as luxury.”

“I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.”

“I believe war is the inevitable fruit of our economic system.”

“The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.”

“Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.”

“The few who profit from the labor of the masses want to organize the workers into an army which will protect the interests of the capitalists.”

“We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means we choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. We elect expensive masters to do our work for us, and then blame them because they work for themselves and for their class.”

“Some day there will have to be some new rules established about name-calling. I don't mean the routine cursing that goes on between husband and wife, but the naming of defenseless, unsuspecting babies.”

“This would be a better place for children if parents had to eat spinach.”