Quotes About Inequality

Anyone who gives a lot of money to the poor must have robbed them first . . . poverty is only the result of the workers not getting proper reward for their labor.

What you're seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they're directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

It isn't enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, 'How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?'

We must be grateful that the Senate appreciates gold. The senators think only about new horses and slaves, but they were never poor as much as I've been poor. I appreciate gold only because of what it brings to me and this is where it's placed me - on this stairs, with the largest city in the world behind me.

Because I'm a young black man driving a really nice, expensive car, I sometimes get harassed when I'm rolling through a ghetto neighbourhood.

James Connolly, 1916: 'The worker is the slave of capitalist society: the female worker is the slave of that slave.

Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody is under the frightful necessity of becoming first a thief and then a corpse.' Thomas More (1474–1535), student at Lincoln's Inn from 1496–1500

A pesar de las diferencias reales que existen entre ellos, los trabajadores de una fábrica se parecen a las secretarias de una oficina, a los campesinos de una finca, a los esclavos de una plantación —incluso a las mujeres en un matrimonio— en que todos ellos viven y trabajan en condiciones de poder desigual.

There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.

Pause for a moment and prayerfully consider your response: What breaks your heart?

The salesmen bought me perfume and invited me to lunch. But they couldn't talk to me about why families of guajiros slept in the city's parks under flashing Coca-Cola signs. Those men only murmured sweet nonsense to me, trying in vain to flatter me.

Some of them were confused and angry, but given the same circumstances, I was convinced that I would have turned out just like them. It was the difference in where we were born, and to whom, that separated us---not the difference of who we were.

There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else.

If there's hell below, we're all gonna go.

The seduction of whiteness and privilege is powerful. Whites can always return to a life of privilege.

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.

The big thieves hang the little ones.

To me, the only way we'll see a collective change in this country is by listening to people who have experienced life in the margins of society, who have lived less privileged versions of my story, in systemic poverty and facing structural racism.

The traditional story of economists has been to say education explains what the returns are to school. I say, 'Okay, that's fine, but what explains the education? How much is just a matter of my giving you a poor kid versus a rich kid?'

It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

Poverty is a very complicated issue, but feeding a child isn't.

Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.

A small child from a developing country has the advantage, from a very early age, of having access to toys which structure his mind, which constitute a sure advantage over the little African child who has never even held a modern toy.