Michael Parenti: Quotes about people

Michael Parenti is American academic. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Michael Parenti: 114 quotes80 likes

“The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.”

Michael Parenti

1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, Fascism In a Pinstriped Suit, p. 32
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.”

Michael Parenti

3 CONSPIRACY: PHOBIA AND REALITY, The JFK Assassination II: p. 174
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“Conservatives are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable indifference they show toward the people who live in it.”

Michael Parenti

1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, Hidden Holocaust,USA, p. 2
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“The overthrow of communism gave a green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, and no longer constrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West.”

Michael Parenti

Source: Blackshirts and Reds (1997), p. 58

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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