„If low-wage workers do not always behave in an economically rational way, that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic. When you enter the low-wage workplace — and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well — you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it supposedly stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration of the shift. The consequences of this routine surrender go beyond the issues of wages and poverty. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy, after all, if large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.“

„A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.“

—  Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd President of the United States 1882 - 1945

1930s, Message to Congress on establishing minimum wages and maximum hours (1937)

„By the way, the leader of any country does likewise. In the West, there is a great excuse: 'We are spreading freedom and democracy around the world.' The United States uses it at all times, even in wars, waged in its own interest.“

—  Hannu Salama Finnish writer 1936

„The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways:1st — When they are neglected in infancy2nd — When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them.3rd — When they are paid low wages for their labour“

—  Robert Owen Welsh social reformer 1771 - 1858

Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (1818).

„Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.“

—  Jonathan Safran Foer, kniha Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Zdroj: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 99

„In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life. The“

—  Vladimir Lenin Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870 - 1924

Zdroj: The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5
Kontext: Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" – supposedly petty – details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., – we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

„What's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?“

—  Mark Twain, kniha Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Zdroj: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

„Much time was wasted and ink spilled in the late 1960s and early 1970s trying to interpret the lagged effect of prices on wages as reflecting adaptive lags in the formation of expectations. But if we have learned anything from the new Keynesian economics of Fischer, Taylor, Blanchard, and their younger followers, it is that price and wage inertia is compatible with rational expectations.“

—  Robert J. Gordon American economist 1940

Robert J. Gordon, The Phillips Curve Now and Then. (1990).

„Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.“

—  Mark Twain, kniha Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Zdroj: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 16

„We are neither for a majority nor for a minority government; neither for democracy not for dictatorship.
We are for the abolition of the gendarme. We are for the freedom of all and for free agreement, which will be there for all when no one has the means to force others, and all are involved in the good running of society. We are for anarchy.“

—  Errico Malatesta Italian anarchist 1853 - 1932

Neither Democrats, Nor Dictators: Anarchists (1926)

„Capitalists control the machineries. They create difficulties to the workers. Consequently rationalism, which has to lead the way for peaceful life to all, has resulted in causing poverty and worries to the people because of dominating forces“

—  Periyar E. V. Ramasamy Tamil politician and social reformer 1879 - 1973

Quoted in “Collected works of Periyar E.V.R.” p. 511.
Rationalism

„Under present-day conditions it is necessary to have corporations in the business world as it is to have organizations, unions, among wage workers.“

—  Theodore Roosevelt American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858 - 1919

1900s, Address at Providence (1901)
Kontext: Where men are gathered together in great masses it inevitably results that they must work far more largely through combinations than where they live scattered and remote from one another… Under present-day conditions it is necessary to have corporations in the business world as it is to have organizations, unions, among wage workers.

„[I]f American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept "workers' democracy" as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept — regretfully, of course — the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done.“

—  Roger Nash Baldwin American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) co-founder 1884 - 1981

Article from Soviet Russia Today

„While there are a number of ways to combat terrorism, attempting to cure the symptoms without tackling the root causes is like waging a losing war on drugs.“

—  Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

„Any job that pays $2.13 an hour is not a job. It's indentured servitude. All labor has dignity and the way that we give labor dignity is by paying people the respect and the value that they are worth... We have to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.“

—  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez American politician 1989

Twitter Post https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1134631705153802241, (31 May 2019)
2019, Twitter Quotes (2019), May 2019

„My hope is that... I will open Democrats' and other progressives' eyes to the many values shared by the Left and Right... like the desire to end corporate welfare and convert to a renewable energy (solar) economy. ...the way to defeat Trump... is to embrace (not marginalize) issues such as raising the minimum wage. ...It is a question of do or just further fade away.“

—  Ralph Nader American consumer rights activist and corporate critic 1934

To the Ramparts (2018)

„We have taken steps which have not been taken by any other democratic government in the world. We are taking steps with regard to prices and wages which no other government, even in wartime, has taken.“

—  Harold Wilson Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1916 - 1995

Speech in the White House (29 July 1966), quoted in The Times (30 July 1966), p. 1.
Prime Minister

„It’s the jihadists who decided to make the world a battlefield and to wage war in perpetuity. Until they abandon the field, what choice do we have but to carry the fight to them?“

—  Charles Krauthammer American journalist 1950 - 2018

2010s, 2013, In defense of Obama’s drone war (2013)

„If we say that we believe in democracy, if we say that the fabric of a democratic society is one which allows for the free play of idea…then, in the name of all the gods, give that free play a chance to work within the constitutional framework.“

—  Lee Kuan Yew First Prime Minister of Singapore 1923 - 2015

Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Oct 4, 1956
1950s

„People are treated for mental disorders, they go back to work and they earn wages again. We can see how their earnings go up. But how do they feel about themselves and the world? That has a value.“

—  David Blanchflower British economist 1952

Reuters article 22 March 2006 http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2006-03-22T182115Z_01_L22484112_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BUDGET-BRITAIN-NICKELL.xml