Top 160 Robert B. Reich Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I think the big problem is you have a vicious cycle of wealth and power in America that’s just gotten completely out of control and you’ve seen it in politics.”

— Robert B. Reich

52. “I have found over the years that the most important way of getting people to relax is self-deprecating humor.”

— Robert B. Reich

53. “The probability that a black student will have white classmates has dropped to what it was before 1954, when the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education declared separate schools inherently unequal.”

— Robert B. Reich

54. “So many Americans are angry and frustrated these days – vulnerable to loss of job and health care and home, without a shred of economic security – they’re easy prey for demagogues offering big lies. Yet the only antidote for big lies is big truth – told relentlessly and powerfully. You must be armed with it.”

— Robert B. Reich

55. “If you ever want to get a sense of your own personal failure, look at yourself trying to get across a point that nobody is listening to and the situation gets worse and worse.”

— Robert B. Reich

56. “We need to expand Social Security to prevent the looming retirement crisis, and we can do it simply by asking billionaires to pay their fair share.”

— Robert B. Reich

57. “Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you’re not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You’re basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich.”

— Robert B. Reich

58. “The rich don’t create jobs. Jobs are created when the vast majority of Americans buy enough to make companies add capacity and hire more workers. But that won’t happen unless the vast majority has enough money to do the buying.”

— Robert B. Reich

59. “There is a deep desire to change the power structure.”

— Robert B. Reich

60. “Look, any cut in greenhouse gases is going to be expensive for American consumers, who are in no mood to bear additional costs.”

— Robert B. Reich

61. “A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful.”

— Robert B. Reich

62. “There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.”

— Robert B. Reich

63. “Most Americans are on a downward escalator. Median wage in the United States, adjusted for inflation, keeps on dropping.”

— Robert B. Reich

64. “Humor itself is a great disinfectant. It enables people to listen.”

— Robert B. Reich

65. “The invisible hand of the marketplace is connected to a wealthy and muscular arm.”

— Robert B. Reich

66. “Two years of required public service would give young people an opportunity to learn civic responsibility by serving the common good directly. It should be a duty of citizenship. This is how we once regarded military service.”

— Robert B. Reich

67. “When I was a kid, the bigger boys would pick on me. So I got an idea that I would make alliances with older boys, like just one or two, who would be my protectors.”

— Robert B. Reich

68. “The biggest political divide in America today is not between Republicans and Democrats. It’s between democracy and oligarchy. Hearing and using the same old labels prevents most people from noticing they’re being shafted.”

— Robert B. Reich

69. “Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven’t risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.”

— Robert B. Reich

70. “America’s real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.”

— Robert B. Reich

71. “The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It’s the party of non-voters.”

— Robert B. Reich

72. “It is a central obligation of politicians as well as journalists, researchers, scientists, and academicians to inform the public of the truth, and to identify lies without fear of retribution. It is the civic responsibility of all of us to check the facts we read or hear, to find and depend upon reliable sources, to share the truth with others, and hold accountable those who lie to us or suppress the truth.”

— Robert B. Reich

73. “The idea of a “free market” separate and distinct from government has functioned as a useful cover for those who do not want the market mechanism fully exposed. They have had the most influence over it and would rather keep it that way. The mythology is useful precisely because it hides their power.”

— Robert B. Reich

74. “Nearly one out of every five is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck. Along with pay, employment benefits have been shriveling. The gap in life expectancy between the nation’s most affluent and everyone else is widening as well.”

— Robert B. Reich

75. “The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.”

— Robert B. Reich

76. “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?”

— Robert B. Reich

77. “We can’t know in advance what history is going to say, but I would be utterly amazed and surprised if American invasion to Iraq from the beginning of its inception, were not judged to be an utter failure and a terrible, terrible thing for the world.”

— Robert B. Reich

78. “If you want to be a change agent, you have to ready to fail.”

— Robert B. Reich

79. “We used to be so proud that our country offered far more economic opportunities than the feudal system in Great Britain, with its royal family, princesses and dukes. But social mobility in the UK is higher than in the US. Our social rift is as big as it was in the 1920s.”

— Robert B. Reich

80. “There’s no problem with borrowing from the future in order to finance investments in the future.”

— Robert B. Reich

81. “I’m 40 years old. What I have seen my whole life is widening income inequality.”

— Robert B. Reich

82. “We are born, we grow up, we live our lives as best we can. If we are thoughtful we are good parents and good partners. If we are wise we strive for integrity and intimacy. If we are fortunate we discover love and joy. If we are able, we make the world a little better than we found it.”

— Robert B. Reich

83. “The United States is a safe harbor.”

— Robert B. Reich

84. “Democracy depends on citizens who are able to recognize the truth, analyze and weigh alternatives, and civilly debate their future, just as it depends on citizens who have an equal voice and equal stake in it. Without an educated populace, a common good cannot even be discerned. This is fundamental.”

— Robert B. Reich

85. “Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market. The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society’s evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them.”

— Robert B. Reich

86. “It is a myth that higher taxes lead to less demand and slower growth. In the first three decades after World War II, US top tax rates on the wealthy were never below 70 percent.”

— Robert B. Reich

87. “Their aim is to divide and conquer: pit unionized workers against nonunionized, public sector workers against nonpublic, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the middle class against the poor.”

— Robert B. Reich

88. “Corporations don’t create jobs, customers do. So when all the economic gains go to the top, as they’re doing now, the vast majority of Americans don’t have enough purchasing power to buy the things corporations want to sell – which means businesses stop creating enough jobs.”

— Robert B. Reich

89. “Those who analogize the federal budget to a family’s budget must know nothing about either.”

— Robert B. Reich

90. “There can be no “free market” without government. The “free market” does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. Competition in the wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules.”

— Robert B. Reich

91. “Corporations are not people, despite what the Supreme Court says, and they don’t need or deserve handouts.”

— Robert B. Reich

92. “Few ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a “free market” existing somewhere in the universe, into which government “intrudes.”

— Robert B. Reich

93. “Britain’s is traditionally a rigid class society.”

— Robert B. Reich

94. “The market is itself a human creation – a set of laws and rules that define what can be owned and traded, and how. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market. Government officials – legislators, administrators, regulators, judges, and heads of state – must decide on and enforce such laws and rules in order for a market to exist. Without norms for the common good, officials have no way to make these decisions other than their own selfish interests.”

— Robert B. Reich

95. “If leadership is about anything, it’s about leading. Not leading people back to where they already are, because they don’t need that. They’re already there.”

— Robert B. Reich

96. “Rather than come together for the common good, we come together to get the best possible deal. We’re clustering by income – attracting members who can contribute the most while excluding those who are more costly.”

— Robert B. Reich

97. “In the life of a nation, few ideas are more dangerous than good solutions to the wrong problems.”

— Robert B. Reich

98. “Political victories that undermine trust in politics shouldn’t be considered victories; they’re net losses for society. Record corporate profits achieved by eroding the public’s trust in business aren’t successes; they’re derelictions of duty. Lobbying and campaign donations that result in laws and regulations favoring the lobbyists and donors aren’t triumphs if they weaken public confidence in our democracy; they, too, are abject failures of leadership.”

— Robert B. Reich

99. “Get out of your ideological bubble. If most of the people you talk with agree with you, you’re wasting your time. You need to engage with people who may disagree or who haven’t thought hard about the issues. Reach across to independents, even to Republicans and self-styled Tea Partiers. Find people who are willing to listen to the facts and are open to arguments and ideas, regardless of the label they apply to themselves. We need them.”

— Robert B. Reich

100. “It’s not government’s business what people do in their private bedrooms.”

— Robert B. Reich