Quotes About Inequality

When I read in newspapers that farmers are dying because of water shortage, I felt deeply pained that we have best of everything, yet we complain so much, whereas there are people who do not even have access to basic necessities of life.

Wherever black people are in America, criminalization exists. Wherever there is a white-dominant space, deep racism exists as well - no matter how progressive. If you cut too far into that progressive, if you do something that's too radical, white racism will emerge.

Some people are born good-looking. Some have the gift of gab. And some are lucky enough to be born smarter than the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, Mother Nature does not dole these characteristics out evenly.

Monetary policy is a blunt tool which certainly affects the distribution of income and wealth, although whether the net effect is to increase or reduce inequality is not clear.

The Touchables, whether they are vegetarians or flesh-eaters, are united in their objection to eat cow's flesh. As against them stand the Untouchables, who eat cow's flesh without compunction and as a matter of course and habit.

It wasn't until sixth grade, at P.S. 168, when my teacher took us on a field trip to her house that I realized we were poor. I have no idea what my teacher's intentions were - whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.

I'm of those who believe that excesses in all matters are not a good idea, whether it's formation of bubbles, whether it's excess in the financial market, whether it's excess of inequality, it has to be watched, it has to be measured, and it has to be anticipated in terms of consequences.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.

We are the poorest and weakest state in the world, occupying the lowest position in international affairs; the rest of mankind is the carving knife and the serving dish, while we are the fish and the meat.

The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

The privileged classes today are bothered about petrol and diesel prices while the poor can't afford two meals a day. I am a very small person, but I want us to think beyond personal and regional interests.

It is pretty ironic that the so-called 'least advanced' people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

My hat's off to documentary filmmakers. I don't know if I'm ever going back to it. You're treated like a second-class citizen at most film festivals. You take the bus while everybody else is flown first-class. If you're a feature film director, you're put in a five-star hotel, and if you're a documentary director, you stay in a Motel 6.

Washington, as we know it, is essentially run by men and women who are not elected or even appointed to their posts, staff members unaccountable to traditional constituencies. They rise according to the needs and whims of their own special constituency of elites.

White people are potential humans - they haven't evolved yet.

Slavery exists. It is black in the South, and white in the North.

I was born on an island with 96 percent of the people black. But all the power and the economy was in the hands of white people who only formed four per cent.