177 Quotes by Robert B. Reich

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.

After examining 1,799 policy issues in detail, two eminent researchers, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, concluded that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

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

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

With declining state and local spending, total public spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research has dropped from 12 percent of GDP in the 1970s to less than 3 percent in 2011.

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.

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

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.

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.