'You know, there’s this great story, of Olaf Palme going to see Ronald Reagan in America, and Olaf Palme was the great Swedish social democratic Prime Minister, leading the campaigns against poverty and inequality, and he went to see Ronald Reagan in the White House. Before he saw Ronald Reagan, Reagan turned to his advisors, and he said, ‘Isn’t this man a Communist?’ And Ronald Reagan’s advisors said, 'No, Mr President, he’s an Anti-Communist'. And Ronald Reagan said, 'I don’t care what kind of Communist he is'.But Ronald Reagan asked Olaf Palme, ‘What do you really believe? Do you believe in abolishing the rich?’ And he said, ‘No, I believe in abolishing the poor.’Gordon Brown
"What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches".
Richard H. Tawney
«Governments, the economy, schools, everything in society, are not for the benefit of the privileged minorities. We can look after ourselves. It is for the benefit of the ordinary run of people, who are not particularly clever or interesting (unless, of course, we fall in love with one of them), not highly educated, not successful or destined for sucess, in fact, nothing very special. It is for the people who, throughout history, have entered history outside their neighbourhoods as individuals only in the records of their births, marriages and deaths. Any society worth living in is one designed for them, not for the rich, the clever, the exceptional, although any society worth living in must provide for our personal benefit. A world that claims that this is its purpose is not a good world, and ought not to be a lasting one».Eric Hobsbawn
«One task of politics is surely to shape social conditions and institutions so that people behave honestly, because they believe that the basic structure of their society is just»Jon Elster
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