Quotes About Inequality

The rich do not want people who come from poor families to rise to the highest position in the country.

Why is Slavery so much condemn'd and strove against in one Case, and so highly applauded and held so necessary and so sacred in another?

Chicago is highly segregated, a fact that both causes and compounds the problems we face in bringing an end to violence.

The ideal flower of hospitality is almost unknown to the rich; it can hardly be grown save in the gardens of the poor; it is one of their beatitudes.

But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.

But there must be some poor! I said. I suppose there must be, but we never think of such people. When one goes poor, we forget him. That is how we keep rich. We mean to be rich always.

That's right, grannie! And the rich have to look down on the poor. No, my dear. I did not say that. The rich have to be KIND to the poor.

For I suspect the next world will more plainly be a going on with this than most people think—only it will be much better for some, and much worse for others, as the Lord has taught us in the parable of the rich man and the beggar.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.

It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.

A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.

The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.

Inequality was the price of civilization.

England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

Apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99 percent of the population exist.

Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer—except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.

Todos los animales son iguales, pero algunos son más iguales que otros.

It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.

Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.

An army of unemployed led by millionaires quoting the Sermon on the Mount—that is our danger.

A fat man eating quails while children are begging for bread is a disgusting sight, but you are less likely to see it when you are within the sound of the guns.

I have known numbers of bourgeois Socialists, I have listened by the hour to their tirades against their own class, and yet never, not even once, have I met one who had picked up proletarian table-manners.

Perhaps it is only when people are somewhere near the starvation level that they have anything to sing about.