Michael Parenti: Trending quotes (page 3)

“The trick is to steal big.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 8, p. 127

“The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 4, p. 60

Fraud

“Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 5, p. 71

Business

“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

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 3, p. 44

People , Fear , Support

“Conservatives have nothing againstincumbency when it is their people who are filling the slots.”

Michael Parenti

1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, Term Limits: Trick or Treat?, p. 92
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

People

“One mechanism of repression is the grand jury.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 9, p. 139

“Putting an end to the population explosion will not of itself save the ecosphere, but not ending it will add greatly to the dangers the planet faces. The environment can sustain a quality of life for just so many people.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Blackshirts and Reds (1997), p. 155

Life , People

“Those who think Roman slavery was such a benign institution have not explained why fugitive slaves were a constant problem. Owners did not lightly countenance the loss of valuable property. They regularly used chains, metal collars, and other restraining devices. Slaves who ﬂed were hunted down and returned to irate masters who were keen to inﬂict a severe retribution.”

Michael Parenti book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome

Source: The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003), Ch. 1

Problem , Loss , Thinking

“American socialism cannot be modeled on the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, or other countries with different historical, economic, and cultural developments.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 334

Country

“Democracy is something more than a set of political procedures. To be worthy of its name, democracy should produce substantive outcomes that advance the health and well-being of the people.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 320

Democracy , People , Health

“There is a tradition of popular struggle in the United States that has been downplayed and ignored. It ebbs and flows but never ceases. Moved by a combination of anger and hope, ordinary people have organized, agitated, demonstrated, and engaged in electoral challenges, civil disobedience, strikes, sit-ins, takeovers, boycotts, and sometimes violent clashes with the authorities - for better wages and work conditions, a safer environment, racial and gender justice, and peace and nonintervention abroad. Against the heaviest odds, they have suffered many defeats but won some important victories, forcible extracting concessions and imposing reforms upon resistant rulers.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 320

Peace , Anger , Justice , Victory

“The American two-party electoral system, with its ballyhoo and hoopla, its impresarios and stunt artists, is the greatest show on earth. Campaign time is show time, a veritable circus brought into our living rooms via television as a form of entertainment. The important thing is that the show must go on - because it is more than just a show. The two-party system electoral social order. It channels and limits political expression, and blunts class grievances. It often leaves little time for the real issues because it gives so much attention to the contest per se who will run? who is ahead? who will win the primaries? who will win the election? It provides the form of republican government with little of the substance. It fives the plutocratic system of appearance of popular participation while being run by and for a select handful of affluent contestants.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 11, p. 179

Appearance , Time

“There is no such thing as unbiased or objective reporting of news. All reports and analyses are selective and inferential to some inescapable degree - all the more reason to provide a wider ideological spectrum of opinions and not let one bias predominate. If we consider censorship to be a danger to our freedom, then we should not overlook the fact that the media are already heavily censored by those who own or advertise in them. The very process of selection allows the politico-economic interests of the selector to operate as a censor.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 10 , p. 177

Freedom

“The police confront dangers and social miseries of a kind most of us can only imagine. They deal with the waste products of a competitive corporate society: the ill-fed, the ill-housed, the desperate, and the defeated. The slums are not the problem, they are the solution; they are the way capitalism deals with the surplus people of a market economy. And for all they cost the taxpayer in crime, police and welfare, the slums remain a source of profit for certain speculators, arsonists, realtors, big merchants, and others.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 8

Imagination , Housing , People , Problem

“America represents more than just an economic system; it is an entire cultural and social order, a plutocracy, a system of rule that is mostly by and for the rich. Most universities and colleges, publishing houses, mass circulation magazines, newspapers, television and radio stations, professional sports teams, foundations, churches, private museums, charity organizations, and hospitals are organized as corporations, ruled by boards of trustees (or directors or regents) composed overwhelmingly of affluent business people. These boards exercise final judgement over all institutional matters.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 3, p. 33

Sport , Housing , Business , People

“Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials and US media, as has been the case at one time or another with Castro, Noriega, Ortega, Qaddafi, Aristide, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, and others.”

Michael Parenti

North Korea: "Sanity" at the Brink (2009)

Self-confidence , Time , Question , Nature

“There is nothing sacred about the existing system. All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic. Marx said this, and so did Jefferson. It is a revolutionary doctrine, and very much an American one.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 335

People