Inequality Quotes - Page 28

• Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.

  Will Durant

  Men, Average, Desire

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1968). “The lessons of history”, Simon & Schuster

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• How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don't have a voice to speak?

  Isabel Allende

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

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• I think of the difficulties which, in various countries, today afflicts the world of work and business; I think of how many, and not just young people, are unemployed, many times due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks selfish profit, beyond the parameters of social justice.

  Pope Francis

  Country, Selfish, Thinking

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• For too long we have tried to consume our
  way to prosperity. Look at the cost: polluted
  lands and oceans, climate change, growing
  scarcity of resources from food to land to fresh
  water, rampant inequality. We need to invent a
  new model; a model that offers growth and social inclusion... that is more respectful of the
  planet's finite resources. Nature has been kind
  to human beings, but we have not been kind to
  nature.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Ocean, Land, Water

  Ban Ki-moon's Press Conference on Rio+20, www.un.org. June 6, 2012.

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• In the US, the problem is primary and secondary education. We've had such an increase in inequality because a quarter of American kids don't finish high school!

  Milton Friedman

  School, Kids, Problem

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• These economic, social, cultural and educational causes of opportunity inequality are complex. And they will not be solved by continuing with the same stale Washington ideas. Five decades and trillions of dollars after President Johnson waged his War on Poverty, the results of this big-government approach are in.

  Marco Rubio

  Educational, War, Opportunity

  Marco Rubio’s speech on poverty, hotair.com. January 8, 2014.

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• Had I been crested, not cloven, my Lords, you had not treated me thus.

  Elizabeth I

  Discrimination, Lord, Treated

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• A woman's work, from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, is as hard as a day at war, worse than a man's working day. ... To men, women's work was like the rain-bringing clouds, or the rain itself. The task involved was carried out every day as regularly as sleep. So men were happy - men in the Middle Ages, men at the time of the Revolution, and men in 1986: everything in the garden was lovely.

  Marguerite Duras

  War, Women, Rain

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• Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient.

  Harriet Martineau

  Imperfect, Institutions, Educated

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.120

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• Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Men, Understanding

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1866). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.24

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• Great and good men and women stirred sugar into their coffee knowing that it had been picked by slaves. Kind, good ancestors of all of us never questioned hangings, burnings, tortures, inequality, suffering and injustice that today revolt us. If we dare to presume to damn them with our fleeting ideas of morality, then we risk damnation from our descendants for whatever it is that we are doing that future history will judge as intolerable and wicked: eating meat, driving cars, appearing on TV, visiting zoos, who knows?

  Stephen Fry

  Zoos, Coffee, Men

  "The future's in the past" by Stephen Fry, www.theguardian.com. July 8, 2006.

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• But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.

  Adam Smith

  Affluence, Making Money, Rich

  Adam Smith, J.R. McCulloch (1828). “Aninquiry in to the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: With a Life of the Author, an Introductory Discourse, Notes, and Supplemental Dissertations by J.R. McCulloch”, p.190

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• He [Hugo Chavez] put poverty at the heart of political debate. Rightly so, given the country's immense inequality and poverty. He invested heavily in social programs such as literacy, health clinics, and education. He promoted Venezuela's indigenous culture and urged compatriots to take pride in its pre-Columbian history. He called time on the US treating Latin America as its backyard.

  Rory Carroll

  Country, Latin, Heart

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• America has tolerated inequality because people think they can get ahead. If you have immobility on top of inequality, then people are not going to be happy campers. If you're stuck on the bottom and there just isn't much churning in society and you're stuck there through your adulthood, that's not a nice life to look forward to.

  Thomas B. Edsall

  Nice, Thinking, America

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Country, Rights, Groups

  Statement to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 18 April 2008, New York, NY

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• Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return.

  Doug Casey

  Government, Giving, Littles

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• Income and wealth inequality have reached obscene levels, the threat of climate change is more frightening than ever, and the billionaire class is now allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money to buy the candidate they want. And it is up to us to stand up and fight back. If we stand together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

  Bernie Sanders

  Fighting, Class, Together

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• consumption can be very harmful to the world. I'm not a big proponent of the idea that consumption makes you morally bad, but there are consequences to our acts, and those consequences are environmental degradation and the huge social inequalities that make our standard of living in the United States possible.

  Judith Levine

  Ideas, Environmental, Degradation

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• The United States has worse income inequality than Nigeria.

  Max Fisher

  United States, Income, Nigeria

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• A lot of women seem to have a similar attitude, - 'I'm not a feminist' - and it gets wearying. What's wrong with being a feminist? I'm proud to be a feminist. It's been one of the most positive things in my life. It's one of the best traditions there is. It's admirable to be a feminist and to stand up for one's sex, to fight against inequality and injustice and to work for a better society.

  Mary Stott

  Sex, Attitude, Fighting

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• In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the meaning of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

  James Madison

  War, Opportunity, Office

  "Political Observations" by James Madison, founders.archives.gov. April 20, 1795.

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• We're dealing with a crisis of inequality, of joblessness, of underemployment.

  Avi Lewis

  Crisis, Underemployment, Joblessness

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality... are felt.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Order, Long, Riches

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• I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, Special, World

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• But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Strong, Heart, Men

  "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume I, Chapter III, Part I, 1835.

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