Quotes About Inequality

Not everyone gets a reservation in the hot restaurant. You must pay your dues. Like it or not there is a pecking order.

Going in and out of a proverbial 'poor door' - a separate entrance for income-restricted residents of mixed-income housing - of your city every day has its costs, even if the 'poor door' woman would be considered affluent in another location.

Too often, low-income Americans must choose between paying for medicine and having their heat shut off.

There are still so many movies made starring 50 men and one woman! A white male actor should never be allowed to complain about anything. Shut up and sit in the corner. I mean, seriously!

Most philanthropists would still rather donate to elite schools, concert halls or religious groups than help the poor or sick.

You have cocktails for 250,000 people when millions upon millions are sick.

I'm really sick of the 'one percent' that is taking all the money from this country, draining the middle class, making it nonexistent.

It's true that eviction affects the young and the old, the sick and the able-bodied. It affects white folks and black folks and Hispanic folks and immigrants. If you spend time in housing court, you see a really diverse array of folks there.

I am Hindu, upper-caste, male, and able-bodied. So everything is on my side. That gives me the extra cushion that Swara Bhaskar won't get.

It's easy to look at South Central and say, 'That's a bad place,' and it's easy to look at Beverly Hills and say, 'It will be a cakewalk,' but it just exposed me to a different set of problems. Both sides relate to each other more than they think.

Democratic Latin America limps sideways because it can't run ahead. There are too many entry barriers to the poor, the innovative, and those without access to credit.

You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.

I realize that 'hire qualified women!' is the sort of outraged demand that's often met with a sigh. No one disagrees, and yet gender inequality in high-paying positions extends into all professions.

All over the U.S. there are people whose lives are being destroyed for lack of proper health care provision, and there is no sight more odious than the rich, powerful and arrogant trying to keep it that way.

If you live in central London, that's probably fine for you, but in places like Edmonton, where you're almost out of sight of London, you've got to pay more and more to get into central London. How does that work?

Prisoners do matter when analyzing the severity of racial inequality in the U.S. Yet because they are out of sight and out of mind, it is easy to imagine that we are making far more racial progress than we actually are.

The first bill that President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I think it says something about his priorities that the first bill he put his name on has my name on it too. As he said that day with me by his side, 'Making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone.'

Because Katrina put it out there, no one can play the pretend game anymore that there isn't poverty and inequality in this country. The Millions More Movement - Katrina gives it added significance.

Developing countries are losing significant tax revenues through corporate tax dodging.

African American students have less access to algebra and more access to seclusion and restraint than do their white peers. The significant disparity in educational resources has caused this problem of disparate discipline and disparate academic outcomes.

We have to challenge the whole idea that it's acceptable for a society like Britain to have such a significant number of people who do not work one day of the week and don't have any possibility of improving the quality of their lives.

One of the most significant factors contributing to the chasm of educational opportunity is the way that schools are funded.

You can't say it's good when guys out there are signing minor league deals and they would be big league players on 80 percent of the teams, but why would a team sign a player when you can pay dirt, and they're not going to win anyway?

The contributions of influential African Americans have frequently been ignored, underrepresented, and even silenced.