Quotes About Inequality

For example, the "theory of relative deprivation" states that people feel distressed by circumstances only inasmuch as their hardship exceeds that of the people around them.

In the United States, for example, two equally skilled and disciplined athletes—one a world-class gymnast and the other a world-class basketball player—are likely to enjoy wildly different degrees of fame and fortune through no fault or merit of their own.

Finally, even random differences in opportunities that arise early in one's career can accumulate, via the Matthew Effect, to generate large differences in outcomes over the course of a lifetime. Rawls's claim was that because the mechanisms of inequality are essentially accidents—whether of birth, or of talent, or of opportunity—a just society is one in which the adverse effects of these accidents is minimized.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired in the final analysis, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and not clothed.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

The idea of service to humanity, putting yourself in situations where people have much less than you do, puts life in perspective.

I felt compelled to venture forth and explore the true face of the world. Leading a satisfying life of plenty had blinded many of us to the immense hardships beyond our borders.

Life is not fair and people are not equal.

We can send people to the Moon; we can see if there's life on Mars - why can't we get $5 [mosquito] nets to 500 million people?

Much of life for many people, even in the heart of the First World, still consists of waiting in a bus shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes.

Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return.

The average life expectancy rate in some parts of Glasgow is 54. If you've ever been there, you'll realize that that's maybe a bit long.

Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.

Not to share one's goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life. It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs.

I started life in a poor family and could not even afford a proper tertiary education.

In reality, I know I'm not hurt directly by sexism; however, my life is made less because of it, so I started thinking about the fallout from relationships in which people feed off each other.

Life is unfair. And it's not fair that life is unfair.

Jesus teaches us to put the needs of the poor ahead of our own, our needs, even if legitimate, will never be so urgent as those of the poor, who lack the necessities of life.

... class differences in health represent a double injustice: life is short where its quality is poor.

There's a difference between the fact that the universe is inherently unfair on a cosmic level, and the fact that life is unfair because people are actively making it so.

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.

Ke Cheng-li doesn't like working-class kids. He only likes rich kids. He made Jiang Ji-li the teacher's assistant for math class and gave her higher grades, and he also let her win all the math contests and awarded her a lot of notebooks. We have to ask the question, What is the relationship between them after all?

Lange, who had been stricken by polio at the age of seven and walked with a painful limp, had become famous for the achingly sympathetic photographs she'd taken for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression. "Cripples know about each other," she said of her ability to capture suffering on film.