Inequality is the root of social evil. — Pope Francis
The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes. — John Maynard Keynes
Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power. — Paul Krugman
Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class. — Matthew Arnold
You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable. — Amartya Sen
Absolute justice demands that mens incomes and rewards should ... vary, and that some have more than others-so long as human justice is upheld by the provision of equal opportunity for all. — Sayyid Qutb
Indias rigid social structure limits intergenerational economic mobility and fosters acceptance of vast wealth disparities. — Steven Rattner
There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery — Karl Marx
Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities. — Pope Francis
When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth. — Thomas Piketty
Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion. — Mario Vargas Llosa
America has become the most unequal society among advanced countries, and rich people are now free to spend as much money on political campaigns as they wish. — Robert Reich
Structuralism argues that a liberal capitalist world economy tends to preserve or actually increase inequalities between developed and less developed economies. — Robert Gilpin
The gap in education in this country, the unfairness of the schools, is one of the great unfairness in this society. — Gaston Caperton
We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Short Economic Inequality Quotes
It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence. — Voltaire
There's a cushy socialism for the rich and this kind of brutal, merciless capitalism for the poor. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity. — Amartya Sen
Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty — Amartya Sen
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people. — Thomas Jefferson
Economic Inequality Image Quotes
We're all consumers. The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife.
What Is Economic Inequality Quotes
To deal with radicalism and extremism, we need to deal with economic inequality. This is what I learned from my experience in Solo and then in Jakarta. — Joko Widodo
What is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits of the labor of the underclass — August Strindberg
Thievery is what unregulated capitalism is all about. — Sayings
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
This happens today: if the investments in the banks fall slightly... a tragedy... what can be done? But if people die of hunger, if they have nothing eat, if they have poor health, it does not matter! This is our crisis today! — Sayings
Income Inequality Quotes
By tying minimum wage to money supply, the poor's income would rise and fall with the rise and fall in money supply. — Max Keiser
Trickle down economics is a fraud. Giving tax breaks to the rich and large corporations does not create jobs. It simply makes the rich richer, enlarges the deficit and increases income and wealth inequality. We need economic policies which benefit working families, not the billionaire class. — Bernie Sanders
Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality. — Eric Alterman
Wealth breeds a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable.
By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then. — Sayings
There is far too little discussion in Washington about the collapse of the middle class , almost no discussion at all about the incredible income inequality and wealth inequality in this country, and the fact that we're moving toward an oligarch form of society. — Bernie Sanders
Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people. — Robert Higgs
As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems.
I think the issue of income and wealth inequality is in fact a moral issue. — Bernie Sanders
In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society. — Sayings
Here's what income and wealth inequality is about. Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made more than 24 billion, enough to pay the salaries of 425,000 public school teachers. This level of inequality is neither moral or sustainable — Bernie Sanders
The past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority. — Janet Yellen
Wealth Inequality Quotes
Today, the top one-tenth of 1% owns nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The economic game is rigged, and this level of inequality is unsustainable. We need an economy that works for all, not just the powerful. — Bernie Sanders
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. — Nelson Mandela
I recognize that globalization has helped many people rise out of poverty, but it has also damned many others to starve to death. It is true that global wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities have also grown and new poverty arisen. — Pope Francis
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. — Warren Buffett
Low interest rates wipe out savers and devastate middle-class workers. The banksters have orchestrated this wealth transference of trillions, from the poor to the very wealthy. At the expense of everybody who isn't at the top. — Max Keiser
A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property. — Harold Laski
I don’t object to some people being richer, even much richer, than others. I object to gain of wealth through political connections rather than earning it by merit. — Edward O. Thorp
How long until we measure wealth inequality in FLOPS? — Andrej Karpathy
He who eats and drinks with the rich leaves the table hungry — Greek Proverbs
In the long run men inevitably become the victims of their wealth. They adapt their lives and habits to their money, not their money to their lives. It preoccupies their thoughts, creates artificial needs, and draws a curtain between them and the world. — Herbert Croly
Economic Equality Quotes
I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us. — Angela Davis
A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody. — George Bernard Shaw
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. — Milton Friedman
Do we believe that there is equal economic opportunity out there in the real world, right now, for each and every one of these groups? If we believed in the tooth fairy, if we believed in the Easter Bunny, we might well believe that. — William Weld
At Coinbase, our mission is to create an open financial system for the world. We believe that open protocols for money will create more innovation, economic freedom, and equality of opportunity in the world, just like the Internet did for publishing information. — Brian Armstrong
For the record, feminism by definition is: 'The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.' — Emma Watson
Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn’t just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress. — Helen Clark
At independence Kenya's economic indicators were equal to those of South Korea, but 45 years down the road, Korea's economy is 40 times that of Kenya. The mediocrity of leadership is across the continent . — Raila Odinga
The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality fo result. Its equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference. — Robert Reich
Imagine a world where everyone used something fair & equitable to settle their economic differences. — Michael Saylor
Economic Justice Quotes
But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why? — Walter E. Williams
Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation. — Daniel Berrigan
Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship. — A. Philip Randolph
If globalization is to succeed, it must succeed for poor and rich alike. It must deliver rights no less than riches. It must provide social justice and equity no less than economic prosperity and enhanced communication. — Kofi Annan
Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen governance. — Ban Ki-moon
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. — John Rawls
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty. — John Maynard Keynes
When the forest is destroyed, when the river is dammed, when the biodiversity is stolen, when fields are waterlogged or turned saline because of economic activities, it is a question of survival for these people. So our environmental movements have been justice movements. — Vandana Shiva
Justice goes across racial and economic barriers - like the good Samaritan. — John M. Perkins
We educated, privileged lawyers have a professional and moral duty to represent the underrepresented in our society, to ensure that justice exists for all, both legal and economic justice. — Sonia Sotomayor
Social Inequality Quotes
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. — Eugene V. Debs
Inequality can be done away with only by establishing a new society, where men and women will enjoy equal rights, resulting from an upheaval in the means of production and in all social relations. Thus, the status of women will improve only with the elimination of the system that exploits them. — Thomas Sankara
The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The world is a ladder for some to go up and others down. — American Proverbs
All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities. — James F. Cooper
I'm against having a Fed. It's socialism in its worst form. But until the Fed is gotten rid of, the only economic variable the poor have to counteract the injustices of the Fed is the minimum wage law. — Max Keiser
I believe that education is the civil rights issue of our generation. And if you care about promoting opportunity and reducing inequality, the classroom is the place to start. Great teaching is about so much more than education; it is a daily fight for social justice. — Arne Duncan
Health inequalities and the social determinants of health are not a footnote to the determinants of health. They are the main issue. — Michael Marmot
More money is put into prisons than into schools. That, in itself, is the description of a nation bent on suicide. I mean, what is more precious to us than our own children? We are going to build a lot more prisons if we do not deal with the schools and their inequalities. — Jonathan Kozol
There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression, environmental degradation, and as long as the weak and small continue to be trodden by the mighty and powerful. — Dalai Lama
Economic Injustice Quotes
We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice. — Indira Gandhi
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice. — Harry S. Truman
Cruelty to animals is an enormous injustice; so is expecting those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder to do the dangerous, soul-numbing work of slaughtering sentient beings on our behalf. — Victoria Moran
Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic,and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression. — Gene Sharp
What I will remember most about Mr Mandela is that he was a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices, metal bars or the burden of hate and revenge. — Muhammad Ali
I have been the victim of many of the injustices that women who are my clients have had. That is how I understand how this is impacting their lives economically, psychologically, often physically. It's all personal. For me, if one woman is denied her rights, we're all being denied our rights. — Gloria Allred
We would, however, perform an injustice to the bourgeois women's rights movement if we would regard it as solely motivated by economics. No, this movement also contains a more profound spiritual and moral aspect. — Clara Zetkin
We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice. — Freeman Dyson
Gender Inequality Quotes
Gender equality, historically has been predominantly a women's movement for women. But I think the impact of gender inequality and how it's affecting men hasn't really been addressed. — Sayings
I have lectured at the U.N. and travelled widely, giving lectures on human rights and gender inequalities in universities. But this is a life I do not wish to live. I don't want to be a showcase, I want to be in a battlefield where I can stand beside the oppressed and the poor. — Taslima Nasrin
Gender inequality is not one problem, it's a collection of problems. — Amartya Sen
The church is an organisation that institutionalises an aversion to homosexuality, it institutionalises gender inequality and it speaks from a place of teaching people being ashamed of their sexuality. — Hozier
One feels so despairing on some levels about what's going on in our culture, in regards to things like gender inequality. But there is progress. There is enhanced empathy and respect for others, we are fighting the tide, even though it seems like a tug of war sometimes. — Uma Thurman
We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved...We want to try to galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for change and we don't just want to talk about it. We want to try and make sure that it's tangible. — Emma Watson
I think there's so many things happening, whether it's gender inequality or immigration, there's just so many issues happening around the world where not doing anything makes you guilty. — Lilly Singh
Woman cannot be free until man's mind is liberated from the megalomania! His self-exaltation is the mother of the gender inequalities. Till we eliminate his exacerbated narcissism, woman will remain unfree! — Mehmet Murat Ildan
While gender stereotypes can have negative impacts on men as well, the vast majority of structural gender inequality: socially, politically, professionally and economically, as well as the overwhelming burden of sexual violence is disproportionately borne by women. — Laura Bates
The more women help one another, the more we help ourselves. Acting like a coalition truly does produce results. Any coalition of support must also include men, many of whom care about gender inequality as much as women do. — Sheryl Sandberg
Income Distribution Quotes
Promote fair opportunities, increase the income of low-income people, expand middle-income groups, standardise the order of income distribution and standardise wealth accumulation mechanisms. — Xi Jinping
The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State. — Bertrand de Jouvenel
Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. — Henry Hazlitt
Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned. — Thomas Sowell
Kelsoism is not accepted by modern scientific economics as a valid and fruitful analysis of the distribution of income but rather it is regarded as an amateurish and cranky fad. — Paul Samuelson
A premise of the new city is that we want a society to be as egalitarian as possible. For this purpose, quality-of-life distribution is more important than income distribution. [And quality of life includes] a living environment as free of motor vehicles as possible. — Enrique Penalosa
Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take. — Barney Frank
Modern government has become a universal transfer agency that utilizes the political process for distributing vast measures of income and wealth. It preys on millions of victims in order to allocate valuable goods and services to its beneficiaries. — Hans F. Sennholz
Only now are increasing numbers of political and social scientists beginning to realize that Kelso's theories provide a private-property-based alternative to the imminent passage of a government-distributed "guaranteed income" or "negative income tax." — Hazel Henderson
By adopting programs to distribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways. — Robert Higgs
Wealth And Poverty Quotes
I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress. — Robert Kennedy
You know what the Quran teaches me? The Quran teaches me that an incredibly wealthy man can be a failure (Firaun) and a homeless man can be successful (Prophet Ibrahim). It teaches me that success has nothing to do with wealth and failure has nothing to do with poverty. — Nouman Ali Khan
One who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and one who gives gifts to the rich—both come to poverty. — Bible Proverbs
There is no greater wealth than wisdom, no greater poverty than ignorance; no greater heritage than culture and no greater support than consultation. — Ali ibn Abi Talib
Monetary policy is about the redistribution of wealth and income from the masses to the classes. — Russell Napier
The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy. — Aristotle
The measure of the wealth of a nation is indicated by the measure of its protection of its industry; the measure of the poverty of a nation is marked by the degree in which it neglects and abandons the care of its own industry, leaving it exposed to the action of foreign powers. — Henry Clay
Ever since I’ve been saving money and not spending it on jewelry, I’ve been getting way richer. — 21 Savage
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed. — Kin Hubbard
Building Black-owned businesses is a powerful way to shift the narrative — and sustain wealth in our communities. — 21 Savage
A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little. — Bernie Sanders
God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure! — Sayings
I know that there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery — Mother Jones
The major economic policy challenges facing the nation today - pick your favorites among the usual suspects of low public and household savings, concerns about educational quality and achievement, high and rising income inequality, the large imbalances between our social insurance commitments and resources - are not about monetary policy. — Timothy Geithner
When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money. — Alice Adams
The coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty. — Lucy Parsons
When fewer workers have unions, the standard of living falls for everyone and the gap between the rich and poor grows. — John Sweeney
What good does it do to sit at the counter when you cannot afford a hamburger? — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The present age handed over the workers, each alone and defenseless, to the unbridled greed of competitors... so that a very few and exceedingly rich men have laid a yoke of almost slavery on the unnumbered masses of non-owning workers. — Pope Leo XIII
Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement. — Bill Gates
The union miner cannot agree to the acceptance of a wage principle which will permit his annual earnings and his living standards to be determined by the hungriest unfortunates whom the non-union operators can employ. — John L. Lewis
The balancing of the budget will not in itself place a teaspoonful of milk in a hungry baby's stomach, or remove the rags from its mother's back. — Sayings
If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life. — Sayings
We must fight inequality and poverty if we want to re-establish peace and security. Seven million Mexicans live in extreme poverty, which is why I have launched a crusade against hunger. We also have to improve our educational system and stimulate economic growth. — Enrique Pena Nieto
Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less. — Lucy Parsons
The essential point here is that all people with small, insecure incomes are in the same boat and ought to be fighting on the same side. Probably we could do with a little less talk about' capitalist' and 'proletarian' and a little more about the robbers and the robbed. — Sayings
I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity. — Boris Johnson
Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over. — Henry George
In the US a child born into a poor family will become a poor adult. The american dream is just that - it is not true, because of the level of extreme inequality. — Winnie Byanyima
To understand the Left, one must understand that in its view the greatest evil is material inequality. The Left is more troubled by economic inequality than by evil as humanity has generally understood the term. — Dennis Prager
...these things become the norm: that some homeless people die of cold on the streets is not news. In contrast, a ten point drop on the stock markets of some cities, is a tragedy. A person dying is not news, but if the stock markets drop ten points it is a tragedy! Thus people are disposed of, as if they were trash. — Pope Francis
We want a better America, an America that will give its citizens, first of all, a higher and higher standard of living so that no child will cry for food in the midst of plenty. — Sidney Hillman
Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. — Louis D. Brandeis
Rising inequality is a cultural and economic cancer on a lot of different levels. — Kevin Drum
How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. — Pope Francis
If we don't rebuild that connection with people we will really find even bigger gaps, because our gap on inequality is not just economic. — Hillary Clinton
A two-parent family based on love and commitment can be a wonderful thing, but historically speaking the "two-parent paradigm" has left an extraordinary amount of room for economic inequality, violence and male dominance. — Stephanie Coontz
The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems. — Eric Alterman
A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility. — Sayings
How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don’t care; we don’t protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another. — Pope Francis
Excessive economic, social and cultural inequalities among peoples arouse tensions and conflicts, and are a danger to peace. — Pope Paul VI
Decreasing economic growth and increasing inequality leads to increased uncertainty. — Nicholas Bloom
When the wilderness movement emerged, it emerged separate from the issue of social inequality and the economic problems of survival. It was a preservationist ecology movement created by an occupying culture. Clearly, a wilderness movement started by Native Americans would not have had the same roots. — Vandana Shiva
Economics is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated. — Tyler Cowen
Let us remember well, however, that whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were stolen from the table of the poor, from the hungry! — Sayings
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
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