Quotes About Inequality

We must powder our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.

When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.

Politiek onderscheid leidt noodzakelijkerwijs tot onderscheid tussen de burgers. De toenemende ongelijkheid tussen het volk en zijn leiders doet zich weldra ook voelen tussen de individuen, en neemt naar gelang de hartstochten, talenten en omstandigheden duizend gedaanten aan.

The spectacle of nature, by growing quite familiar to him, becomes at last equally indifferent. It is constantly the same order, constantly the same revolutions; he has not sense enough to feel surprise at the sight of the greatest wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for that philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what he has every day seen. Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Inequality among Mankind, Ch. 1, 20.

Résumons en quatre mots le pacte social des deux états. Vous avez besoin de moi, car je suis riche et vous êtes pauvre ; faisons donc un accord entre nous : je permettrai que vous ayez l'honneur de me servir, à condition que vous me donnerez le peu qui vous reste pour la peine que je prendrai de vous commander.

D'où vient la faiblesse de l'homme ? De l'inégalité qui se trouve entre sa force et ses désirs. Ce sont nos passions qui nous rendent faibles, parce qu'il faudrait pour les contenter plus de forces que ne nous en donna la nature. Diminuez donc les désirs, c'est comme si vous augmentiez les forces : celui qui peut plus qu'il ne désire en a de reste ; il est certainement un être très fort.

Luxury] corrupts both rich and poor, the rich by having it and the poor by wanting it.

se comprenderá entonces cómo la diferencia de hombre a hombre debe ser menor en el estado de naturaleza que en el de sociedad, y cómo la desigualdad natural debe aumentar en la especie humana por la desigualdad de educación.

Sometimes the so-called law is nothing but the haves telling the have-nots to stay in their place.

Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted that they couldn't even see the stars.

Je vous demande alors de conserver à l'esprit cette phrase toute simple que je tiens de mon père et qu'il utilisait pour minorer les fautes de chacun : "Tous les hommes n'habitent pas le monde de la même façon.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Quand les riches se font la guerre, ce sont les pauvres qui meurent.

The more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker.

The better shaped his product, the more misshapen the worker.

A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated and turned out to grass.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.

The things that hold women back, hold them back from sitting at the boardroom table and they hold women back from speaking at the PTA meeting.

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

My research clearly reveals that if we want to put inner-city workers to work immediately, we just can't rely on the private sector. They don't want to touch them; they don't want to hire them.

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

In a world where technology and capital are highly transferable, there is a real risk that comparative advantage comes to be defined as whose labor force will work for the lowest wage.

You should never protest outside a rich guy's home during the day because he's not there. He's at work grinding the faces of the poor.

Bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work.