Quotes About Inequality

Suffice it to say, during the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped and protected by his master, is happier than the free colored citizen of the North. To that conclusion I have never since arrived.

There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones—there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men

Many evil men are rich, and good men poor, but we shall not exchange with them our excellence for riches.

nature of privilege—the inability to empathize with other people and their lot in life.

There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

But for a mother who was submissive to the degree my mother was, it was OK to kill girls. For a father like mine, it was normal to chop off his daughters hair with sheep shears, and to beat her with a belt or a cane or tie her up in the stable all night with the cows.

A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap.

If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.

To one extent, if you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.

I've been in many of them [ghetto areas] and to some extent I would have to say this: If you've seen one city slum you've seen them all.

To some extent, if you've seen one city slum you've seen them all.

Being drunk in public was inexcusable for a woman. One annual report of the Board of Police Justices bluntly stated that "public exhibitions of drunkenness in females indicate a depraved and abandoned condition," while men were sometimes let off the hook because in their case there were often "circumstances to be taken in mitigation of punishment which rarely exist in cases of females.

That is the way of management from time immemorial, in medieval feudal states, communist dictatorships, and capitalist conference rooms alike. It is the way the powerful treat those less so, and it is the human condition.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

We must also consider the enormous social-class differences in addiction rates. That is, the farther down the social and economic scale a person is, the more likely the person is to become addicted to alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes, to be obese, or to be a victim or perpetrator of family or sexual abuse. How

Backed into a corner, the poor can riot, but the rich start war.

Cómo no iban a apodersarse los deliriros de grandeza de un campesino del Banato si de pronto, a los veintiún años, con sólo mover unas figuritas sobre un tablero de madera, ganaba más en una semana que su pueblo entero en todo un año de talar bosques y realizar las tareas más duras?

The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it—

Escucha las voces de los pequeños y los débiles, de las mujeres que se entregaron en vano, de las prostitutas riéndose de sus miserias, el rencor tenebroso de quienes están siempre enfermos. A los solitarios, ante quienes jamás se posó una sonrisa. Escucha a los niños que sollozan y se lamentan. Y los gritos impotentes de las que fueron seducidas en secreto.

unsäglich arm, weil sie nichts geben konnte und nur empfing, mit

It's never fair. It has never been fair, any of it, and our reasonableness cannot undo the unfair.

Discrimination could show itself in exceedingly rank ways. Hotels with signs that stated No Jews Allowed were commonplace, and one hotel advertised with the slogan, Always A View, Never A Jew.

Ninety percent of the population were serfs who could be beaten, killed, transported away from their family, or sold for a gambling debt or as collateral for a loan (a healthy male at the time would fetch between 200 and 500 rubles in the Moscow market; a good-looking young female, several times that).

Everyone else had funds galore, if not from their job- and it rarely seemed to be from their job except for the bankers- then from trust funds, parental subsidies, or other mythical sources.