Inequality Quotes

Occupying the bottom end of the inequality ladder, and becoming a 'collateral victim' of a human action or a natural disaster, interact the way the opposite poles of magnets do: they tend to gravitate towards each other.

Zygmunt Bauman

As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.

Judith Lewis Herman

Taking measures to ensure stability could assure the long-term economic growth and welfare at a global level

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

I don't know about you, but I only have one life, and I don't want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.

Wallace Shawn

At its most basic, the logic of 'meritocracy' is ironclad: putting the most qualified, best equipped people into the positions of greates responsibility and import...But my central contention is that our near-religious fidelity to the meritocratic model comes with huge costs. We overestimate the advantages of meritocracy and underappreciate its costs, because we don't think hard enough about the consequences of the inequality it produces. As Americans, we take it as a given that unequal levels of achievement are natural, even desirable. Sociologist Jermole Karabel, whose work looks at elite formation, once said he 'didnt think any advanced democracy is as obsessed with equality of opportunity or as relatively unconcerned with equality of condition' as the United States. This is our central problem. And my proposed solution for correcting the excesses of our extreme version of meritocracy is quite simple: make America more equal

Christopher L. Hayes

Surely you can see the failings of the system. Inequality, injustice, unfairness, and exploitation--

Allan Dare Pearce

I wonder why it is that the countries with the most nobles also have the most misery?

Francis Bacon

As women of the western world, we see our sisters in other lands being raped, maimed and even executed simply for trying to exercise the most basic freedoms, such as taking a bus alone or wearing a bright red sweater. And when we look at our own world, we see that it too still lacks equality for the sexes. It's a terrible thing to go through one's entire lifetime not getting to do all the things we dream of doing just because others say we're not permitted to do them, and to know that they will hurt us if we try. But far, far worse than that is when there's not a thing or a person outside that's stopping us from living exactly as we wish, but we stop ourselves; internally we do not give ourselves permission, simply because we're too scared of what will happen if we dare.

Patricia V. Davis

Mistresses, have you ever noticed that when we disagree with a male – I hesitate to say ‘man’ – or find ourselves in a position over males, the first comment they make is always about our reputations or our monthlies?”One of the new women snorted. Others snic

Tamora Pierce

So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets...

Oscar Wilde

There is today a division of labor between the elite and the masses. In medieval Europe aristocrats spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries whereas peasants lived frugally minding every penny. Today the tables have turned. The rich take great care managing their assets and investments, while the less well-heeled go into debt buying cars and televisions they don't really need.

Yuval Noah Harari

The quest to remove all inequality is the deadening hand of socialism and results in social stagnation.

Cory Bernardi

I think it's wrong that only one percent of the people should own ninety percent of the country.

Sally Wentworth

What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), who sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together.

Beryl Markham

Root cause of inequality is the mass scale digital disruption advantage as means of wealth creation is concentrated.

Ziad K. Abdelnour

The fact that Man is Nature’s perverse instantiation can only lead to the appalling conclusion that Man, too, is some kind of an artificial intelligence

Stephan Attia

Socialism and Communism have failed, but now Capitalism is failing us.

Jo M. Sekimonyo

I couldn't make any sense of this logic, that the better off got more and those had little got less. The world ran on this law and only on this.

Neel Mukherjee

This is why i hate social media. It gives a voice to people who dont (sic) deserve one.

Gary Streeter

If human equality is to be for ever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

George Orwell

Why we are hanging around with inequality concept every day, it is like comparing water with the bread.

M.F. Moonzajer

It’s ridiculous – a girl steps out, goes dancing, gets her hair cut, decides to spend the summer in Italy and it’s a scandal. A chap does it and no one bats an eyelid.

Sara Sheridan

As has been long observed, men are people, but women are women.

Cordelia Fine

John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"That silenced him for a few moments.Then he said—very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!""I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Americans were happy to celebrate their super-rich and, at least sometimes, worry about their poor. But putting those two conversations together and talking about economic inequality was pretty much taboo.

Chrystia Freeland

Economics has made good on its promise to deliver prosperity and democratic freedom to much of the world, but in doing away with the age-old problems of humanity, it has opened up a crisis of an entirely new variety.

Philip Roscoe

By now, they rank people by income level or wages roughly the same: The bottom seventy per cent or so are virtually disenfranchised; they have almost no influence on policy, and as you move up the scale you get more influence. At the very top, you basically run the show.

Noam Chomsky

OURSOCIETY ISCONTROLLED BY LAWYERSAND FINANCIERS"PROBLEMMAKERS WE NEED TO EVOMETO A SOCIETY LEAD BYCREATORS, ENGINEERS, SCIENTISTS PROBLEMSOLVERS. SURELY WE WILLHAVE MORE INGENUITYCOOPERATION ANDPEACE

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

The first commendment of hte post 1970s meritocracy can be sumed up as follows: "Thou shall provide equality of opportunity to all, regardless of race, gender, or sexual oritentation, but worry not about equality of outcomes." But what we've seen time and time again is that the two aren't so neatly separated. If you don't concern yourself at all with equality fo outcomes, you will, over time, produce a system with horrendous inequality of opportunity. This is the paradox of meritocracy: It can only truly come to flower in a society that starts out with a relatively high degree of equality. So if you want meritocracy, work for equality. Because it is only in a society which values equality of actual outcomes, one that promotes the commonweal and social solidarity, that equal opportunity and earned mobility can flourish.

Christopher L. Hayes

White ain't nothing.'Mama's grip did not lessen. 'It is something, Cassie. White is something just like black is something. Everybody born on this Earth is something, and nobody, no matter what color is better than anybody else.''Then how come Mr. Simms don't know that.''Because he's one of those people who has to believe that white people are better than black people to make himself feel big.' I stared questionably at Mama, not really understanding.Mama squeezed my hadn't and explained further, 'You see, Cassie, many years ago, when our people were fist brought from Africa in chains to work as slaves in this country--''Like Big Ma's Papa and Mama?'Mama nodded. "Yes, baby. Like Papa Luke and Mama Rachel. Except they were born right here is Mississippi, but their grandparents were born in Africa. And when they came, there was some white people who thought that is was wrong for any people to be slaves. So the people who needed slaves to work in their fields and the people who were making money bringing slaves from Africa preached that black people weren't really people like white people were, so slavery was all right. They also said that slavery was good for us because it thought us to be good Christians, like the white people.' She sighed deeply, her voice fading into a distant whisper, 'But they didn't teach us Christianity to save our souls, but to teach us obedience. They were afraid of slave revolts and they wanted us to learn the Bible's teachings about slaves being loyal to their masters. But even teaching Christianity didn't make us stop wanting to be free, and many slaves ran away.â€�...She was silent for a moment, then went on. 'Well, after a while, slavery became so profitable to people who had slaves and even to those who didn't that most people started to believe that black people weren't really people like everybody else. And when the Civil War was fought, and Mama Rachel and Papa Luke and all the other slaves were freed, people continued to think that way. Even the Northeners who fought the war didn't really see us equal to white people.'So, now, even though seventy years have passed since slavery, most white people still think of us as they did then, that we're not as good as they are. And people like Mr. Simms hold onto that belief harder than some other folks because they have little else to hold onto. For him to believe that he is better than we are makes him think that he's important, simply because he's white.

Mildred D. Taylor

The hyping of disabled athletes into superhuman status by Channel 4 only deepens our wounds, inflicted by continual assaults on our daily lives. It truly seems that the only acceptable disabled person is a Paralympian – and then only for a few weeks.

Penny Pepper

There is also the basic inequality of being born either with a natural talent or without one. Clever or stupid. No matter how much you try to argue against it, Dora, we are not born equal. All we can ever strive for is the equality of opportunity for those who have the ability to make the most of it.

Sally Wentworth

She took my papers, the papers that had followed me from the Khobar police station to jail, and pointed at a place where I was supposed to sign. On the paper there was a line for charges. In the blank space, someone had written “driving while female.

Manal Al-Sharif

How beautiful it is to live in a world with no walls.

Manal Al-Sharif

We were like captive animals that had lost the will to fight. We even went so far as to defend the very constraints that they hadimposed upon us.

Manal Al-Sharif

Demands for equality need to be as complicated as the inequalities they seek to address.

Reni Eddo-Lodge

His August Majesty chided the bureaucrats for failing to understand a simple principle: the principle of the second bag. Because the people never revolt just because they have to carry a heavy load, or because of exploitation. They don't know life without exploitation, they don't even know that such a life exists. How can they desire what they cannot imagine? The people will rvolt only when, in a single movement, someone tries to throw a second burden, a second heavy bag, onto their backs. The peasant will fall face down into the mud - and then spring up and grab an ax. He'll grab an ax, my gracious sir, not because he simply can't sustain this new burden - he could carry it - he will rise because he feels that, in throwing the second burden onto his back suddenly and stealthily, you have tried to cheat him, you have treated him like an unthinking animal, you have trampled what remains of his already strangled dignity, taken him for an idiot who doesn't see, feel, or understand. A man doesn't seize an ax in defense of his wallet, but in defense of his dignity, and that, dear sir, is why His Majesty scolded the clerks. For their own convenience and vanity, instead of adding the burden bit by bit, in little bags, they tried to heave a whole big sack on at once.

Ryszard Kapuściński

[T]he full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fi

United Nations

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison

Pearl S. Buck

In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn’t unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large.The gates of the rich occasionally rattled, remained class. The poor took down one another, and the world’s great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace.

Katherine Boo

The most convincing and enduring foe of the global financial economy ultimately is the global financial economy itself. - Ulrich Beck

Richard Swift

Capitalism does not merely mean that the housewife may influence production by her choice between peas and beans; or that plant managers have some voice in deciding what and how to produce: it means a scheme of values, an attitude toward life, a civilization—the civilization of inequality and of the family fortune.

Joseph Alois Schumpeter

But the basic structure of capitalism, in which a small number own most of the productive assets, guarantees that the vast majority of people will (at best) spend their lives earning wages, but never profits.

Michael A. McCarthy

It was evidently quite obvious to a powerful intellect like his that the one essential condition for a healthy society was equal distribution of goods - which I suspect is impossible under capitalism. For, when everyone's entitled to get as much for himself as he can, all available property, however much there is of it, is bound to fall into the hands of a small minority, which means that everyone else is poor.

Thomas More

According to the economic story, you're free to enter and exit the world of markets as you please. As a buyer, you're free to choose whether to buy something or not. If you want something and can afford to pay for it, it's yours. If nothing pleases you, you can "vote with your dollar" and buy nothing. In practice, if you're less mobile than others in the world of markets somehow, perhaps because you're a child or a senior, or are poor, or have learning disabilities or mental health issues, you don't have the same access to the market as others do who are more independent Instead, you'll likely find it hard to identify your choices and make the best choice, which you need to be able to do for the market to operate efficiently, or you may not have enough money to enter the market to begin with. Sometimes your "best choice" isn't much of a choice at all; if your two options are to starve or to buy bread at extortion rates from the only seller in town, your "freedom" to enter or exit the market doesn't amount to much.

F.S. Michaels

In a capitalist society there are always inequalities of class and wealth. People who inherit money and property will always see themselves as being superior to those who have to work for it.

Sally Wentworth

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different.

Noam Chomsky

You see the mistakes of one system—the surveillance—and the mistakes of the other—the inequality—but there’s nothing you could have done in the one and nothing you can do now about the other. She laughs wryly. “And the clearer you see that, the worse you feel.

Anna Funder

Is distinctive black culture the cause of economic disparity between whites and blacks or merely the reflection of it?

Steven D. Levitt

The protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. But increasingly, and especially in the US, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote". Rather than correcting the market failures, the political system was reinforcing them.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas...

E.M. Forster

Charity erodes the cultural prerequisites for a vigorous democracy.

Janet Poppendieck

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man -in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.

Frank Chodorov

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man — in temperament, character, and capacity — and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.

Frank Chodorov

The low suffer most the blow of the law

Agona Apell

Ban privileges. The rules of the game should be the same to all players, regardless of their size, location, or any other criteria

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

On December 10, 2013, Eric Boyles, the man who lost his wife Hallie and only daughter Shelby in the fatal accident, discovered that Mr. Couch would serve the minimal time in prison for his actions.[ 16] In fact, Mr. Couch was sentenced to exactly zero days in prison. Although Mr. Couch was driving 70 mph in a 40 mph zone, had a blood alcohol level of 0.24, and had valium in his system, Judge Jean Boyd granted Mr. Couch extreme leniency.[ 17] In lieu of prison time, the Judge sentenced Mr. Couch to ten years of probation and In assessing the ruling, a New York Times Article suggests the defense of “affluenza” played a critical role in the decision. The Article stated: Judge Boyd did not discuss her reasoning for her order, but it came after a psychologist called by the defense argued that Mr. Couch should not be sent to prison because he suffered from ‘affluenza’ — a term that dates at least to the 1980s to describe the psychological problems that can afflict children of privilege. Prosecutors said they had never heard of a case where the defense tried to blame a young man’s conduct on the parents’ wealth. And the use of the term and the judge’s sentence have outraged the families of those Mr. Couch killed and injured, as well as victim rights advocates who questioned whether a teenager from a low-income family would have received as lenient a penalty.[ 19] "This has been a very frustrating experience for me," said prosecutor Richard Alpert. "I'm used to a system where the victims have a voice and their needs are strongly considered. The way the system down here is currently handled, the way the law is, almost all the focus is on the offender.

Renwei Chung

On June 15, 2013, Ethan Couch killed four pedestrians and injured two others in Westlake, Texas.[ 13] Mr. Couch killed Breanna Mitchell, whose car broke down; Hollie and Shelby Boyles, who came to assist Breanna; and Brian Jennings, a youth minister who also stopped to help. In addition, Mr. Couch critically injured two of his passengers, Solimon Mohmand and Sergio Molina.[ 14] The sixteen-year-old teen admitted to speeding and being drunk when he lost control of his pickup. Tests revealed he had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit and traces of Valium in his system at the time of the accident.----------------On December 10, 2013, Eric Boyles, the man who lost his wife Hallie and only daughter Shelby in the fatal accident, discovered that Mr. Couch would serve the minimal time in prison for his actions.[ 16] In fact, Mr. Couch was sentenced to exactly zero days in prison. Although Mr. Couch was driving 70 mph in a 40 mph zone, had a blood alcohol level of 0.24, and had valium in his system, Judge Jean Boyd granted Mr. Couch extreme leniency.[ 17] In lieu of prison time, the Judge sentenced Mr. Couch to ten years of probation and In assessing the ruling, a New York Times Article suggests the defense of “affluenza” played a critical role in the decision. The Article stated: Judge Boyd did not discuss her reasoning for her order, but it came after a psychologist called by the defense argued that Mr. Couch should not be sent to prison because he suffered from ‘affluenza’ — a term that dates at least to the 1980s to describe the psychological problems that can afflict children of privilege. Prosecutors said they had never heard of a case where the defense tried to blame a young man’s conduct on the parents’ wealth. And the use of the term and the judge’s sentence have outraged the families of those Mr. Couch killed and injured, as well as victim rights advocates who questioned whether a teenager from a low-income family would have received as lenient a penalty.[ 19] "This has been a very frustrating experience for me," said prosecutor Richard Alpert. "I'm used to a system where the victims have a voice and their needs are strongly considered. The way the system down here is currently handled, the way the law is, almost all the focus is on the offender.

Renwei Chung

The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future periodbe much better instructed than they are at present; they may be taughtto employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than atthe ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than theyhave ever hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive itpossible, though not probable that they may have more leisure; but it isnot in the nature of things that they can be awarded such a quantity ofmoney or subsistence as will allow them all to marry early, in the fullconfidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerousfamily.

Thomas Robert Malthus

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Inequality Quotes

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