Inequality Quotes

“Mistresses, have you ever noticed that when we disagree with a male – I hesitate to say ‘man’ – or find ourselves in a position over males, the first comment they make is always about our reputations or our monthlies?”

One of the new women snorted. Others snickered.

Kel looked at the man, who was momentarily speechless. “If I disagree with you, should I place blame on the misworkings of your manhood? Or do I refrain from so serious an insult” – she made a face – “far more serious, of course, than your hint that I am a whore. Because my mother taught me courtesy, I only suggest that my monthlies will come long after your hair has escaped your head entirely.”
― Tamora Pierce, Lady Knight

“This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial.”
― Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men

“When people can get away with crimes just because they are wealthy or have the right connections, the scales are tipped against fairness and equality. The weight of corruption then becomes so heavy that it creates a dent that forces the world to become slanted, so much so — that justice just slips off.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Until our world decides that every human matters, that everyone has a right to food and safety and freedom and healthcare and equality, it is the obligation of those privileged to have food and safety and freedom and healthcare and equality to fight tirelessly for those who do not.”
― L.R. Knost

“In a capitalist society there are always inequalities of class and wealth. People who inherit money and property will always see themselves as being superior to those who have to work for it.”
― Sally Wentworth, Summer Fire

“Women are also property in our bible; adultery is a property crime in the Old Testament, not a sex crime.”
― Bill Maher, When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism

“Whenever he realizes that a female is more gifted than him, the average man subconsciously consoles himself with the fact that she does not have even a tiny penis.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord.”
― Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel

“You know how the story ends. He escaped and went on to become the greatest chief Suntown ever had. He never built a shrine or a temple or even a shack in the name of Tia. In the Great Book, her name is never mentioned again. He never mused about her or even asked where she was buried. Tia was a virgin. She was beautiful. She was poor. And she was a girl. It was her duty to sacrifice her life for his.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death

“Occupying the bottom end of the inequality ladder, and becoming a 'collateral victim' of a human action or a natural disaster, interact the way the opposite poles of magnets do: they tend to gravitate towards each other.”
― Zygmunt Bauman, Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age

“Paradoxically, the sources available today (in the era of big data) are less precise than those that were available a century ago due to the internationalization of wealth, the proliferation of tax havens, and above all, lack of political will to enforce financial transparency, so it is quite possible that we are underestimating the level of wealth inequality in recent decades.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology

“Perhaps if you don't know there's a gap, you don't worry about it. If you were a millipede, a tshongololo, crawling along the ground would you look at the birds and worry about not having wings? Probably not.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Tears of the Giraffe

“The eye of true equality often seems to have some degree of disrespect for the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty to the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty, although in reality, it's simply irrespectiveness.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I think it's wrong that only one percent of the people should own ninety percent of the country.”
― Sally Wentworth, Summer Fire

“Homelessness is illegal. In my city no one is homeless although there are an increasing number of criminals living on the street. It was smart to turn an abandoned class into a criminal class, sometimes people feel sorry for the down and outs, they never feel sorry for criminals, it has been a great stabilizer.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

“As women of the western world, we see our sisters in other lands being raped, maimed and even executed simply for trying to exercise the most basic freedoms, such as taking a bus alone or wearing a bright red sweater. And when we look at our own world, we see that it too still lacks equality for the sexes.

It's a terrible thing to go through one's entire lifetime not getting to do all the things we dream of doing just because others say we're not permitted to do them, and to know that they will hurt us if we try.

But far, far worse than that is when there's not a thing or a person outside that's stopping us from living exactly as we wish, but we stop ourselves; internally we do not give ourselves permission, simply because we're too scared of what will happen if we dare.”
― Patricia V. Davis, The Diva Doctrine: 16 Universal Principles Every Woman Needs to Know

“I'm convinced that not all units of time are equal.”
― Crystal Woods, Better to be able to love than to be loveable

“We certainly face, as did the ancient Greeks, the problem of oligarchy—ever more threatening as globalization increases differences in wealth.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

“I am talking of a place in India, at least a third of the country, a fertile place, full of rice fields and wheat fields and ponds in the middle of those fields choked with lotuses and water lilies, and water buffaloes wading through the ponds and chewing on the lotuses and lilies. Those who live in this place call it the Darkness. Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well off. But the river brings darkness to India—the black river.”
― Aravind Adiga

“There is also the basic inequality of being born either with a natural talent or without one. Clever or stupid. No matter how much you try to argue against it, Dora, we are not born equal. All we can ever strive for is the equality of opportunity for those who have the ability to make the most of it.”
― Sally Wentworth, Summer Fire

“People who don’t know our city or our officers might conclude these people were targeted BECAUSE they were black.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Come to yo’ Grandma, honey. Set in her lap lak yo’ use tuh. Yo’ Nanny wouldn’t harm a hair uh yo’ head. She don’t want nobody else to do it neither if she kin help it. Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“So, regardless of the outcome, Bialy will be pissing off some segment of his voters. If a grand jury fails to indict or indicts Jones and Bialy fails to secure his conviction; civil rights protests are likely in an already divided Wayne County. If Bialy secures a conviction, he becomes anti-cop or anti-law and order. It’s a classic lose-lose situation.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“We should not overestimate the extent of the diffusion of ownership that has taken place over the past two centuries: the egalitarian ownership society—or even, more modestly, a society in which the poorest half of the population owns more than a token share of the wealth—has yet to be invented.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology

“The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till out political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich, - a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.”
― Stephen Johnson Field

“Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“A culinary cosmopolitan perspective resides in a context of tremendous inequality, but it may simultaneously facilitate meaningful cultural exchange, and attempt to link food choices to global risks like climate change.”
― Josée Johnston, Foodies

“The law is where you buy it and what you pay for it.”
― Raymond Chandler, Selected Letters

“As economic inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the future held a better version of the present. Lacking a functional state that assured basic social goods taken for granted elsewhere - education, pensions, health care, transport, parental leave, vacations - Americans could be overwhelmed by each day, and lose a sense of the future.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“The idea that each country–or worse yet–each person in each country is individually responsible for its production and its wealth, makes little sense from a historical point of view. All wealth is collective in origin.”
― Thomas Piketty, A Brief History of Equality