Quotes About Inequality

Once, standing in an open space, he'd seen a commercial airliner pass overhead, on its way from one country to another, the sun golden upon its wings. It seemed incredible to him that there were people inside, drinking wine and eating from plastic trays, pressing a button for the hostess. Did they have any idea what was going on directly below them, a nation devouring itself? He felt like a drowning man watching a ship sail by.

Why is there a struggle between capital and labor?

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.

Against a backdrop of stark group inequality, the most successful extremist groups offer their members precisely what existing societal institutions do not: a tribe, a sense of belonging and purpose, an enemy to hate and kill, and a chance to reverse the group polarity, turning humiliation into superiority and triumph. This is the formula that al-Qaeda and ISIS have exploited.

Without taking anything away from their important contributions across the globe, U.S. elites often seem to have more compassion for the world's poor than America's poor, perhaps because the former are easier to romanticize.

many of the "bad guys" were simply lost, addicted, and hungry. He had learned that many of the "good guys" were bullies, excited about using their power simply because they could.

if a woman healed a person with a combination of herbs she learned from her mother, it was called witchcraft or at best "folk medicine," but if a man, with a medical degree, using the same herbs, healed a person, it was called medicine.

Equestrian horses have a life better than 80 percent of Moroccans

Written laws are like spiders' webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

[Anacharsis] laughed at him [Solon] for imagining the dishonesty and covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders' webs, and would catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but easily be broken by the mighty and rich.

These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.

It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.

The world system wide reality is the competitive dog-eat-dog war of all against all (à la Hobbes), in which only the few can win and the many must lose. And so it has been for millennia, thanks to the world system's unequal structure and uneven process, which Wallerstein helps us identify.

for the rich pity only each other, no?

Elle ne comprenait pas qu'une partie de ce peuple en haillons n'eût rien à faire en ce lieu. Comment Dieu pouvait-il choisir ceux-ci plutôt que ceux-là ? Ce Dieu des uns et pas des autres, comment l'admettre, comment le vivre ?

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.

Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice.

If you want a definition of what a coward is, it's needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them.

You see, there is a list, written by the hand of the Almighty in a celestial book, which details the rich and wonderful accomplishments his subjects might achieve here on earth: father of philosophy, composer of the finest music, ace pilot of the skies, paramour to lucky women. Now I knew: beside the name Gilbert Joseph was written just one word -- driver. All endeavours to erase, replace or embellish were useless.

If you're poor it will be almost impossible to get a higher education that will allow you to get out of the lowest category. If, on the other hand, you have a fortune it will be far easier to do trade or to start a company than it would if you have to depend on borrowed money. The more money you have the easier it is to make more.

Self-isolation in a slum is a contradiction in terms.