Michael Parenti Quotes

47 Sourced Quotes

When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.

Michael Parenti
The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.

Michael Parenti
It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.

Michael Parenti
The media have been tireless in their efforts to suppress the truth about the gangster state.

Michael Parenti
Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.

Michael Parenti
Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all.

Michael Parenti
The dirty truth is that the rich are the great cause of poverty.

Michael Parenti
Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

Michael Parenti
The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution.

Michael Parenti
Conservatives have nothing against incumbency when it is their people who are filling the slots.

Michael Parenti
One does not have to be a Marxist to know there is something very wrong in this society.

Michael Parenti
The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.

Michael Parenti
The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.

Michael Parenti
In the end I created a career of my own, concentrating on my writing and lecturing, reaching larger audiences than I would had I ended up with tenure and a full teaching load. It was Virginia Woolf who said that it is terrible to be frozen out of a sacred tradition-but even more terrible to be frozen into it.

Michael Parenti
It may come as a surprise to some academics, but there is a marked relationship between economic power and political power.

Michael Parenti
Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated.

Michael Parenti
Russia became a juicy chunk of the Third World, with immense reserves of cheap labor, a vast treasure of natural resources, and industrial assets to be sold off at giveaway prices.

Michael Parenti
Even though the crime rate has dropped in recent years, the United States has more police per capita then any other nation in the world.

Michael Parenti
The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.

Michael Parenti
You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.

Michael Parenti
Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions.

Michael Parenti
There is a century-old saying, "The dollar votes more times than the man."

Michael Parenti