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Cynicism is the largest obstacle to social change. Cynicism is dangerous because people throw up their hands and say, Well it's not possible. Why should I even try?

Robert Reich

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Robert Reich
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: June 24
Economist
Former United States Secretary Of Labor
Political Scientist
Politician
University Teacher
Scranton
Pennsylvania
Robert Bernard Reich
People
Possible
Social
Hands
Obstacle
Change
Largest
Wells
Cynicism
Well
Obstacles
Even
Throw
Trying
Dangerous

More quotes by Robert Reich

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We already have an annual wealth tax on homes, the major asset of the middle class. It's called the property tax. Why not a small annual tax on the value of stocks and bonds, the major assets of the wealthy?
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I knew Hillary Clinton from undergraduate days and was enormously impressed with her. She was a terrific energy and enthusiasm, and a great organizer. And I knew that she was going to have a political future.
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Socialism for rich bankers and capitalism for everyone else.
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If consumers don't have the wherewithal to spend because all the money's going to the top, and the people at the top only spend a very small fraction of what they earn, then the economy is almost inevitably destined to slow.
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Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
Robert Reich
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Yale Law School was the kind of place you went if you felt you needed to go to law school, maybe, for your resume, but you really didn't want to practice law. You wanted to do public policy, or maybe go into politics.
Robert Reich
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Those who analogize the federal budget to a family's budget must know nothing about either.
Robert Reich
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The United States is a safe harbor.
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The rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy then they're doing now with a large share of an economy that is barely growing at all.
Robert Reich
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The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.
Robert Reich
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Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.
Robert Reich
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Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.
Robert Reich
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Disney is no longer just Mickey Mouse Disney is family entertainment. And we're seeing more and more brands change into something that is far greater and broader than individual products and services.
Robert Reich
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We're now moving toward a radically different economy. You absolutely can't have a distribution oligopoly. The new oligopolies - and I think there will be new oligopolies - will be oligopolies of trustworthiness. Microsoft, Amazon, Schwab, and other brands will dominate psychic space, not shelf space.
Robert Reich
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There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.
Robert Reich
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Now, inventiveness and empathy, those qualities, if they're together in the same person, you've got an entrepreneurial genius. But they do tend to be slightly separate.
Robert Reich
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The silent majority really is a liberal majority, even though the word liberal has taken a real beating over the last 20 years by radical conservatives.
Robert Reich
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One thing I've learned from 35 years in the classroom is that people learn best when they are laughing, when they are emotionally hit, that it's both the brain and the heart.
Robert Reich
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I, from the luxury of my laptop computer, can summon extraordinary bargains on everything I want, and I can also move my savings anywhere. This ability to choose more broadly and to switch more easily is the central fact of modern economic life.
Robert Reich
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Being critical of the nation is a far cry from being unpatriotic or anti-American. In fact, most social criticism . . . is based on a love of America's ideals and a concern we're not living up to them.
Robert Reich