Michael Parenti Quotes

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About Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti (born 1933) is an American political scientist, historian and media critic.

Born: 1933

Categories: Historians, Critics, Political scientists, Americans, Living people

Quotes: 39 sourced quotes total

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There is a century-old saying, "The dollar votes more times than the man."
The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution.
You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.
Conservative pundits have a remarkable amount of free speech.
When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.
Michael Parenti
• 5 MISCELLANY AND MEMORABILIA, Struggles in Academe: A Personal Account, p. 248
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform.
The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.
The media have been tireless in their efforts to suppress the truth about the gangster state.
Michael Parenti
• 3 CONSPIRACY: PHOBIA AND REALITY, The JFK Assassination I, p. 159
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.
The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.
Even though the crime rate has dropped in recent years, the United States has more police per capita then any other nation in the world.
Russia became a juicy chunk of the Third World, with immense reserves of cheap labor, a vast treasure of natural resources, and industrial assets to be sold off at giveaway prices.
Michael Parenti
• 2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Yeltsin's Coup And The Medias Alchemy, p. 140
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
To complain about how the media are dominated by liberals, Limbaugh has an hour a day on network television, an hour on cable, and a radio show syndicated by over 600 stations.
Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated.
Michael Parenti
• 3 CONSPIRACY: PHOBIA AND REALITY, The JFK Assassination II: p. 189
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
The trick is to steal big.
The mass media are class media.
Michael Parenti
• 2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Fabricating a "Cultural Democracy", p. 107
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
Profits are what you make when not working.
One mechanism of repression is the grand jury.
The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.
The dirty truth is that the rich are the great cause of poverty.
Conservatives have nothing against incumbency when it is their people who are filling the slots.
Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.
One does not have to be a Marxist to know there is something very wrong in this society.
Michael Parenti
• 4 POLITICAL THEORY AN CONSCIOUSNESS, Political Science Fiction, p. 231
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
Twelve states in the Great Plains have a wind energy potential greater then the electric use of our entire nation.
Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.
The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it.
Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
It may come as a surprise to some academics, but there is a marked relationship between economic power and political power.
It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.
Revolutions are not push button affairs; rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action.
Michael Parenti
• 1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy, p. 64
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.
The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces.
Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions.
Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all.
Conservatives insist that government should be " run more like a business." One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation.
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.
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
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)
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.
In the end I created a career of my own, concentrating on my writing and lecturing, reaching larger audiences than I would had I ended up with tenure and a full teaching load. It was Virginia Woolf who said that it is terrible to be frozen out of a sacred tradition-but even more terrible to be frozen into it.
Michael Parenti
• 5 MISCELLANY AND MEMORABILIA, Struggles in Academe: A Personal Account, p. 252
• Source: Wikiquote: "Michael Parenti" (Sourced, Dirty truths (1996), first edition)

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