Best 305 quotes in «inequality quotes» category

If there were something that Mother Nature or God could do with money, She or He would have sold immortality to the rich a long time ago.

If trickle-down economics worked, we would not have four food banks in Kensington and Chelsea.

If we want truth and justice to rule our global village, there must be no hypocrisy. If there is no truth, then there will be no equality. No equality, no justice. No justice, no peace. No peace, no love. No love, only darkness.

I know. But it’s got to be this way, that she isn’t sure, so people looking at it a long time from now, women and men too, might feel badly, might even weep that at some ignorant time there was once a woman raped who was pressured, even expected, to kill herself.

I glance down to what I'm wearing. A crop top, a skirt - it's hot, and it made sense to me. I don't think it looks slutty; I think it looks like me.

I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial.

I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.

I know I could’ve been on the other side of the line too. I refuse to accept injustice and inequality because I know it can be against any one of us, our brothers and sisters and friends and family. I know it’s personal. I know this is our only chance, our only planet, our only shot. And, I know this is my brick.

Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her." (Letter, 17 June 1837)

I'm convinced that not all units of time are equal.

Immobility results when people end up trapped by the social circumstances into which they are born: the networks in which they are embedded fail to provide them with the information and opportunities that they need to succeed.

In a patriarchal society, one of the most important functions of the institution of the family is to make feel like a somebody whenever he is in his own yard a man who is a nobody whenever he is in his employer’s yard.

In effect, the poor person is a rich person left to fend for him or herself, without the support of institutions that help the person to take 'good' decisions.

Inequality and poverty, unhealth and no wealth are hand in hand. And if we are all born equal that should be true in all lands. We cannot divide the world between poor and rich countries. It's like saying the ones are good, the others are junkies. That can only increase more prejudice, miseries and sorrow. Turning the wheel today it will lead to a better tomorrow.

Inequality is the deepest of problems, built into the structure of reality itself, and will not be solved by the presumptuous, ideology-inspiring retooling of the rare free, stable and productive democracies of the world.

Inequality and poverty, health and wealth are hand in hand. And if we are all born equal that should be true in all lands. We cannot divide the world between poor and rich countries. It's like saying the ones are good, the others are junkies. That can only increase more prejudice, miseries and sorrow. Turning the wheel today it will lead to a better tomorrow.

Inequality is one of the pillars of the world economy.

Inequalities at the bottom of the US wage distribution have closely followed the evolution of thee minimum wage: the gap between the bottom 10 percent of the wage distribution and the overall average wage widened significantly in the 1980s, then narrowed in the 1990s, and finally increased again in the 2000s. Nevertheless, inequalities at the top of the distribution - for example, the share of total wages going to the top 10 percent -- increased steadily throughout this period. Clearly, the minimum wage has an impact at the bottom of the distribution but much less influence at the top, where other forces are at work.

Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men's striving for what is equal.

Inequality makes people feel poor and act poor, even when they're not.

In my land, in the event of a divorce, the mother has the right to retain her children if they are still suckling. But in most cases, a mother maintains custody of daughters until a girl child reaches puberty. In the case of male children, the boy should be allowed to remain with his mother until he is seven. When he reaches his seventh birthday, he is supposed to have the option to choose between his mother or father. Generally it is accepted that the father have his sons at age seven. A son must go with his father at the age of puberty, regardless of the child's wishes. Often, in the case of male children, many fathers will not allow the mother to retain custody of a son, no matter what the age of the child.

In no country does the average income give the right picture of how people live but in a country with higher inequality it is likely to be particularly misleading. Given that the US has by far the most unequal distribution of income among the rich countries, we can safely guess that the US per capita income overstates the actual living standards of more of its citizens than in other countries....The much higher crime rate than in Europe or Japan -- in per capita terms, the US has eight times more people in prison than Europe and twelve times more than Japan -- shows that there is a far bigger underclass in the US.

In some circumstances, a focus on extrinsic rewards (money) can actually diminish effort. Most (or at least many) teachers enter their profession not because of the money but because of their love for children and their dedication to teaching. The best teachers could have earned far higher incomes if they had gone to banking. It is almost insulting to assume that they are not doing what they can to help their students learn, and that by paying them an extra $500 or $1,500, they would exert greater effort. Indeed, incentive pay can be corrosive: it reminds teachers of how bad their pay is, and those who are led thereby to focus on money may be induced to find a better paying job, leaving behind only those for whom teaching is the only alternative. (Of course, if teachers perceive themselves to be badly paid, that will undermine morale, and that will have adverse incentive effects)

In some countries, the strictly Progressive man reveals himself to be just as much as if not more prejudiced than the typical Reactionary. There is at times a sort of arrogant condescension in one's gushing, bleeding-heartedness, in that, behind the mask of social activism, one is acting on behalf of one's perceived 'inferiors'. He may promote himself as the savior of the world; he may pat on the head all those he insidiously assumes to be the lesser, whether in status or class or ability, and treat them as helpless children: but the biggest danger of all is that by his own conscience he may feel for them, think for them, and thus, decide for them. It is with such, this artificial brand of empathy, and self-righteousness and narcissism, that we always naively yet so ignorantly pity 'the others', and ultimately, in our schemes to secure them, we merely hold them down.

In the 1960's, Labour had gained some power, or at least respectability. Spokesmen for the working class - but of course not necessarily coming from that class or belonging there except through ideology - were upset by the exposed inequalities and abuses disguised as treatment. It did not exactly strengthen the credibility of these measures that most receivers of this type of treatment for crime turned out to belong to just those classes supposed to be in political power.

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.

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

It does seem true that a young woman may sometimes behave in a way that can be called titillating, and that men take such behavior as being directed entirely at them. [...] I've often seen blushing young men with shining eyes behave in the same way, but no one says of them that they want to be raped. If, after taking a few steps forward, they then decide to retreat, no one accuses them of being cunt teasers. In fact, the disappointed woman probably thinks it's all her fault.

I think back to this so often in trying to make sense of the world - how there are people who have so much and people who have so little, and how I fit in with them both. Often I find myself trying to bridge the two worlds, to show people, either the people with so much or the people with so little, that everything is yours and everything is not yours. I want to make people understand that boxing ourselves into tiny cubbies based n class, race, ethnicity, religion—anything, really—comes from a poverty of mind, a poverty of imagination. The world is dull and cruel when we isolate ourselves. Survival, true survival of the body and soul, requires creativity, freedom of thought, collaboration. You might have time and I might have land. You might have ideas and I might have strength. You might have a tomato and I might have a knife. We need each other. We need to say: I honor the things that you respect and I value the things you cherish. I am not better than you. You are not better than me. Nobody is better than anyone else. Nobody is who you think they are at first glance. We need to see beyond the projections we cast onto each other. Each of us is so much grander, more nuanced, and more extraordinary than anybody thinks, including ourselves. […] I’ve seen enough to know that you can be a human with a mountain of resources and you can be a human with nothing, and you can be a monster either way. Everywhere, and especially at both extremes, you can find monsters. It’s at the extremes that people are most scared—scared of deprivation, one one end; and scared of their privilege, on the other. With privilege comes a nearly avoidable egoism and so much shame, and often the coping mechanism is to give. This is great and necessary, but giving, as a framework, creates problems. You give, I take; you take, I give—both scenarios establish hierarchy. Both instill entitlement. The only road to equality—a sense of common humanity; peace—is sharing, my mother’s orange. When we share, you are not using your privilege to get me to line up behind you. When we share, you are not insisting on being my savior. Claire and I always looked for the sharers, the people who just said, ‘I have sugar, I have water. Let’s share water. Let’s not make charity about it.

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

It is a pervasive condition of empires that they affect great swathes of the planet without the empire's populace being aware of that impact - indeed without being aware that many of the affected places even exist. How many Americans are are of the continuing socioenvironmental fallout from U.S. militarism and foreign policy decisions made three or four decades ago in, say, Angola or Laos? How many could even place those nation-states on a map?

It is our entire culture, the way it runs on money, rewards inhumanity, encourages disconnection and isolation, causes great inequality and suffering, that's the enemy. That is the only enemy worth fighting.

It occurred to me that as a man I could do anything, everything I wanted.

It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord.

It’s the process of being minimized, invalidated, silenced. It’s the process of being subjected to whatever someone else thinks I owe them. It’s the process of being used, examined, explored, and thrown away. It’s the process of being convinced to comply with the orders of someone who does not see me as their equal, someone who sees nothing wrong with the notion that I’m somehow lesser than they are. Rape isn’t about sex; it’s about all those other things. It’s about power.

It's clear that equality doesn't quite cut it. Asking for a sliver of disproportionate power is too polite a request. I don't want to be included. Instead, I want to question who created the standard in the first place.

It’s not right that some people have so much and others have so little.

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.

Many of the actions by which men have become rich are far more harmful to the community than the obscure crimes of poor men, yet they go unpunished because they do not interfere with the existing order.

I wanted to write a book about poverty that didn’t focus exclusively on poor people or poor places. Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor people and rich people alike. To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship. This sent me searching for a process that bound poor people and rich people together in mutual dependence and trigger. Eviction was such a process.

Living as a richer person among the poor is very stressful

MAGISTRATE Don't men grow old? LYSISTRATA Not like women. When a man comes home Though he's grey as grief he can always get a girl. There's no second spring for a woman. None. She can't recall it, nobody wants her, however She squanders her time on the promise of oracles, It's no use...

Many a rich man’s bed is bigger than many a poor woman’s bedroom; his bedroom, her house.

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

It was the lot of the Fifity-fourth to bear the brunt of the struggle against the bitter injustice of inferior pay to which black troops were subjected, and the further struggle to secure for the enlisted men who earned it by intelligence and bravery, the right to rise from the ranks and serve as officers.

Men can be relentless," she agrees, "when they think a woman belongs to them.

Men are stronger physically and mentally than women, and men have achieved great things for humanity, but men must limit their ego, and show greater respect towards women, and help women so as all together to help humanity progress.

Meritocracy is a social arrangement like any other: it is a loose set of rules that can be adapted in order to obscure advantages, all the while justifying them on the basis of collective values. pg. 199

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 snickered. Kel looked at the man, who was momentarily speechless. “If I disagree with you, should I place blame on the misworkings of your manhood? Or do I refrain from so serious an insult” – she made a face – “far more serious, of course, than your hint that I am a whore. Because my mother taught me courtesy, I only suggest that my monthlies will come long after your hair has escaped your head entirely.

Morals do exist outside of organized religion, and the ‘morality’ taught by many of these archaic systems is often outdated, sexist, racist, and teaches intolerance and inequality. When a parent forces a child into a religion, the parent is effectively handicapping his or her own offspring by limiting the abilities of the child to question the world around him or her and make informed decisions. Children raised under these conditions will mature believing that their religion is the only correct one, and, in the case of Christianity, they will believe that all who doubt their religion’s validity will suffer eternal damnation. This environment is one that often breeds hate, ignorance, and ‘justified’ violence.