Top 160 Robert B. Reich Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Every organization, no matter who it is, just follow the money.”

— Robert B. Reich

2. “Well-trained and dedicated employees are the only sustainable source of competitive strength.”

— Robert B. Reich

3. “Social change occurs when the gap between the ideals that people hold and the reality that they see every day gets too large.”

— Robert B. Reich

4. “As to the meaning of “corporate social responsibility,” Friedman and I would agree: If a certain action improves the corporation’s bottom line, there’s no point in labeling it “socially responsible.” It’s just good business.”

— Robert B. Reich

5. “You can’t inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.”

— Robert B. Reich

6. “Socialism for rich bankers and capitalism for everyone else.”

— Robert B. Reich

7. “The core principle is that we want an economy that works for everyone, not just for a small elite. We want equal opportunity, not equality of outcome. We want to make sure that there’s upward mobility again, in our society and in our economy.”

— Robert B. Reich

8. “Once norms are broken without consequence, further breakage ensues.”

— Robert B. Reich

9. “Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.”

— Robert B. Reich

10. “In Washington, it’s dog eat dog. In academia, it’s exactly the opposite.”

— Robert B. Reich

11. “Standing up to bullies is the hallmark of a civilized society.”

— Robert B. Reich

12. “A concern for the common good – keeping the common good in mind – is a moral attitude. It recognizes that we’re all in it together. If there is no common good, there is no society.”

— Robert B. Reich

13. “Any bank that is too big to fail is too big. Period.”

— Robert B. Reich

14. “Education is a public good that builds the capacity of a nation to wisely govern itself, and promotes equal opportunity.”

— Robert B. Reich

15. “Americans who are angry and suspicious of one another will fight over the crumbs rather than join together against those who have run off with most of the pie.”

— Robert B. Reich

16. “Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.”

— Robert B. Reich

17. “We reform the system. We save capitalism from its own excesses.”

— Robert B. Reich

18. “In the ’90s it was irrational exuberance. Now it may be irrational doom and gloom.”

— Robert B. Reich

19. “The Democratic Party is DEAD.”

— Robert B. Reich

20. “There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.”

— Robert B. Reich

21. “Inequality is bad for everyone, not just the middle class and the poor.”

— Robert B. Reich

22. “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 B. Reich

23. “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 B. Reich

24. “Power is the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others. On a large scale, power is the capacity to set the public agenda – to frame big choices, to influence legislators, and to get laws enacted or prevent them from being enacted, to assert one’s will on the world.”

— Robert B. Reich

25. “Is there no virtue among us?” asked James Madison, rhetorically. “If there be not, no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea.”

— Robert B. Reich

26. “The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches – with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone – was once at the core of the American Dream.”

— Robert B. Reich

27. “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 B. Reich

28. “The only sure way to stop excessive risk taking on Wall Street so you don’t risk losing your job, or your savings or your home, is to put an end to the excessive economic and political power of Wall Street by busting up the big banks.”

— Robert B. Reich

29. “Averages don’t always reveal the most telling realities. You know, Shaquille O’Neal and I have an average height of 6 feet.”

— Robert B. Reich

30. “We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.”

— Robert B. Reich

31. “True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.”

— Robert B. Reich

32. “We are creating a one size fits all system that needlessly brands many young people as failures, when they might thrive if offered a different education whose progress was measured differently. Paradoxically we’re embracing standardized tests just when the economy is eliminating standardized jobs.”

— Robert B. Reich

33. “The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality fo result. Its equality of opportunity. There’s a fundamental difference.”

— Robert B. Reich

34. “Cynicism is the last refuge of those who don’t want to do the work of creating a better society.”

— Robert B. Reich

35. “As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. He might have added that everyone is entitled to their own interpretations but not their own logic. When we accept lies as facts, or illogic as logic, we lose the shared reality necessary to tackle our common problems. We become powerless.”

— Robert B. Reich

36. “Education is not the only answer and it’s certainly not the immediate solution. At best, it’s a necessary, but not sufficient response to widening inequality.”

— Robert B. Reich

37. “I mean, you hear the word ‘globalization’ over and over and over again. Globalization, globalization, globalization. Rarely has a word gone so directly from obscurity to meaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence.”

— Robert B. Reich

38. “Public shaming can also carry a painful stigma. “Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death,” wrote Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who also sought to put an end to public stocks and whipping posts.”

— Robert B. Reich

39. “An Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

— Robert B. Reich

40. “In journalism, there are only two stories – “Oh, the wonder of it,” and “Oh, the shame of it.””

— Robert B. Reich

41. “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 B. Reich

42. “Leadership must entail trusteeship. Leaders are stewards of the unwritten rules we once took for granted, that constituted the common good.”

— Robert B. Reich

43. “Our core identity – the most precious legacy we have been given by the generations who came before us – is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common. If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we are becoming browner or speak in more languages than we once did. It is because we are losing our sense of the common good.”

— Robert B. Reich

44. “Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.”

— Robert B. Reich

45. “The concentration of wealth in America has created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency, a health-care system in which they can buy care that others can’t, and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail.”

— Robert B. Reich

46. “There’s sort of a chilling effect on non-profits and the media and a lot of other places because the establishment is so powerful. That’s where the money is.”

— Robert B. Reich

47. “The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn’t technology or globalization. It’s the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market.”

— Robert B. Reich

48. “When corporations get special handouts from the government, subsidies and tax breaks, it costs you. It means you have to pay more in taxes to make up for these hidden expenses, and government has less money for good schools and roads, Medicare and national defense and everything else you need.”

— Robert B. Reich

49. “Patriotism based on the common good does not pander to divisiveness. True patriots don’t fuel racist or religious or ethnic divisions. They aren’t homophobic or sexist or racist. To the contrary, true patriots confirm the good that we have in common. They seek to strengthen and celebrate the “We” in “We the people.”

— Robert B. Reich

50. “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 B. Reich