Inequality Quotes - Page 17

• The dream of capitalism is to co-opt people with higher living standards without redistributing any wealth. Without co-optation, widespread repression is the only guarantor of gross inequality.

  Holly Sklar

  Dream, People, Wealth

  Holly Sklar (1980). “Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management”, p.44, South End Press

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• Even after facing jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously and boldly spoke out against racial inequality.

  Yvette Clarke

  Kings, Jail, Luther

  "Fighting to Fulfill 'The Dream'” by Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 27, 2011.

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• Popular privileges are consistent with a state of society in which there is great inequality of position. Democratic rights, on the contrary, demand that there should be equality of condition as the fundamental basis of the society they regulate.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Rights, Society, Fundamentals

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

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• For Nature is not unjust. She does not steal into the womb and like an evil fairy give her good gifts secretly to men and deny them to women. Men and women are born free and equal in ability and brain. The injustice begins after birth.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Men, Evil, Giving

  Pearl S. Buck (1941). “Of Men and Women”

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• the vicious result of privilege is that the creature who receives it becomes incapacitated by it as by a disease.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Disease, Privilege, Results

  Pearl S. Buck (1941). “Of Men and Women”

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• Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Innocent Man, Subjects

  Joseph Addison (1872). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.443

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• the less powerful group usually knows the powerful one much better than vice versa - blacks have had to understand whites in order to survive, women have had to know men - yet the powerful group can afford to regard the less powerful one as a mystery.

  Gloria Steinem

  Powerful, Men, Order

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.289, Open Road Media

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• Homemakers work longer and harder than any other class of worker in the United States for less pay, and are the most likely to be replaced by a younger worker.

  Gloria Steinem

  Class, Pay, United States

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• Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wine, Men, Drunk

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.64

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• Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Nature, Flower, Eden

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• Who's counting? It was, of course, the minority who were counting. It always is. Most of the women I know today would dearly like to use their fingers and toes for some activity more enthralling than counting. They have been counting for so long. But the peculiar problem of the new math is that every time we stop adding, somebody starts subtracting. At the very least (the advanced students will understand this) the rate of increase slows. ... The minority members of any group or profession have two answers: They can keep score or they can lose.

  Ellen Goodman

  Math, Two, Long

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

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• It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

  Agnes Repplier

  Education, Brother, Children

  Agnes Repplier (1908). “A Happy Half-century: And Other Essays”

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• he issue of inequality in this country [USA], and the ways that money has captured our political system, are serious indicators of that. And climate change is a game-changer. We really are in serious trouble as a species if we stick with business as usual. We desperately need to find alternatives, and in fact we are surrounded by them.

  Cynthia Kauffman

  Country, Games, Usa

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• A holistic solution to income inequality is going to take a lot of work, but every time you prove that one of the strands is achievable and that it has a positive impact on people's lives you take another step towards proving the bigger theory of the case.

  Bill de Blasio

  Impact, People, Income

  "Bill de Blasio on the Crisis of Inequality and the Blind Spots of the Democratic Party". Interview with Eric Alterman, www.thenation.com. May 14, 2015.

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• Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective.

  George Packer

  Class, Ambitious, Sap

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• Most of the problem I see amongst friends and I've experienced amongst myself is when people haven't accommodated the inequality that they want, they haven't understood that their partner wants to give more love and receive less or they haven't understood that their partner wants to receive more, but sort of give less.

  Stephen Fry

  People, Giving, Want

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. December 8, 2009.

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• How can you trust people who are poor and own no property? ... Inequality of property will exist as long as liberty exists.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Long, People, Liberty

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• To whomever gives a kiss or a blow
  Render a kiss or blow
  But to whomever gives when you are unable to return
  Offer all the hatred in your heart
  For you were slaves and he enslaves you

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Heart, Kissing, Blow

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• Sometimes the facts of the crime are so distracting - there's been some tragic murder or horrific incident, and people aren't required to think as carefully and thoughtfully, and directly, about this legacy of racial inequality and structural poverty. And what it's contributing to these wrongful convictions.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Thinking, People, Legacy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The United States in many ways resembles a Third World country - far more elevated, but it has many of those structural characteristics: the extreme inequality of wealth, the deterioration of infrastructure because it only serves poor people, predatory operations, huge corruption, and so on.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, People, United States

  "Chomsky: "The Business Elites... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

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• I see the sharp inequality between how Haitian and Cuban refugees are treated in Florida. Both groups come here because their lives are equally desperate. But on arrival, the Haitians are incarcerated, and some are immediately repatriated, whereas Cubans get to stay and are eligible for citizenship.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Florida, Groups, Citizenship

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.progressive.org. October 1, 2003.

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• The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat.

  Ben Shapiro

  Jobs, Simple, Cities

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• At a time of massive inequality, I think we can raise substantial sums of revenue to address the needs of working families, the elderly, and the children, by asking those people who are doing phenomenally well to start paying their fair share.

  Bernie Sanders

  Children, Thinking, Elderly

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• Among us, what is not allowed to women is equally not allowed to men.

  St. Jerome

  Men, Sexism

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• Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren't about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?

  Ben Shapiro

  Government, Long, Care

  "SHAPIRO: Why Socialism Is on the Rise". www.truthrevolt.org. January 8, 2014.

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