“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.”
Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 335
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Michael Parenti 57
American academic 1933Related quotes

“Commanding Heights, Interview on PBS” https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/int_miltonfriedman.html, (Oct. 1, 2000)

Source: Marketing Insights from A to Z: 80 Concepts Every Manager Needs to Know, 2011, p. 127; Quote in the context of new product development.

Equality (1943)
Context: We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut — whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book III, On Consumption, Chapter VI, Section I, p. 418

as a comparison of her artistic filmmaking ethos in relation to the Hong Kong New Wave and the Taiwanese New Wave
In Conversation with Ann Hui & Man Lim Chung | SGIFF 2020 - 15 Dec 2020 at 39 Min 32 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT-7lyGwm5k
Interview at the 31st Singapore International Film Festival

Rolling Stone interview http://www.columbia.edu/~marg/ani/articles/rolling_stone.html (1995)

Statement regarding a police shooting in South Bend, Indiana, in her first Democratic Party presidential debate (27 June 2019), as quoted in "Long-shot 2020 Dem Marianne Williamson calls for reparations, after debate skirmish over South Bend shooting" by Brooke Singman. in Fox News (27 June 2019) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/long-shot-2020-dem-marianne-williamson-calls-for-reparations-after-debate-skirmish-over-south-bend-shooting
James G. March and Johan Olsen, (1989) Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics. New York: Free Press. p. 1-2