120 Inequality Quotes

Following is our list of inequality quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about wealth inequality.

Quick Jump To

Famous Inequality Quotes

Inequality is the root of social evil. - Pope Francis

Inequality is the root of social evil. — Pope Francis

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. - Aristotle

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. — Aristotle

Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class. — Matthew Arnold

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people. — Thomas Jefferson

It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence. - Voltaire

It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence. — Voltaire

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

True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius. — Felix Schelling

Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power. — Paul Krugman

That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity. — Lester Maddox

Equality is of two kinds, numerical and proportional; by the first I mean sameness of equality in number or size; by the second, equality of ratios. — Aristotle

Equality of opportunity is freedom, but equality of outcome is repression. — Dick Feagler

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals. — Felix Frankfurter

Gender inequality is not one problem, it's a collection of problems. — Amartya Sen

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

Short Inequality Quotes

  • The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others. — Julian Bond
  • As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest. — Nelson Mandela
  • Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. — Nelson Mandela
  • The world is a ladder for some to go up and others down. — American Proverbs
  • The freeman winks and the slave takes a beating. — Moroccan Proverbs
  • The rich get richer, and the poor get babies. — American Proverbs
  • Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Women are like raindrops: some fall on palaces, others on rice fields. — Vietnamese Proverbs
  • 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

Inequality Image Quotes

Inequality quote As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of
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.

Economic Inequality Quotes

A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little. — Bernie Sanders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wealth Inequality Quotes

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

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

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

I think the issue of income and wealth inequality is in fact a moral issue. — Bernie Sanders

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

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

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 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

Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged. — Jessica Valenti

We have to put reduction of health inequalities at the centre of our public health strategy and that will require action on the social determinants of health. — Michael Marmot

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us wage a moral and political war against the gross wealth and income inequality... ...let us understand that when we stand together, we will always win. — Bernie Sanders

I want to make a positive point of Ikea. It makes income inequality a minor distraction. — Greg Gutfeld

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality. — George Bernard Shaw

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

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

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

The historical weight of gender inequality has tended to concentrate women in lower-paid jobs with fewer benefits, at the same time made them primarily responsible for care giving. — Stephanie Coontz

People Writing About Inequality

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Aristotle

Aristotle
quotes on life, love and success

1252 18854
Read quotes by Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen
quotes on poverty, economics and justice

142 3757
Read quotes by Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela
quotes on leadership, life and education

666 15746
Read quotes by American Proverbs

American Proverbs
quotes on american, culture and freedom

195 308
Read quotes by Pope Francis

Pope Francis
quotes on love, youth and hope

1329 6540
Read quotes by Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold
quotes on poetry, culture

236 917

More Inequality Quotes

If you are not the victim, don't examine it entirely from your point of view because when YOU'RE not the victim, it becomes pretty easy to rationalize and excuse cruelty, injustice, inequality, slavery, and even murder. But when you're the victim, things look a lot differently from that angle. — Gary Yourofsky

Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest. — Baron de Montesquieu

The United States of America is a nation where people are not united because of those three glaring frailties: racism, injustices and inequities. — Yuri Kochiyama

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

As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. — Sonia Sotomayor

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. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. — Adam Smith

Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren't about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy? — Ben Shapiro

Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, or even armed struggle? — Slavoj Žižek

To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all day long. So even if we agree that sexual imagery is in fact a language, it is clearly one that is already heavily edited to protect men's sexual - and hence social - confidence while undermining that of women. — Naomi Wolf

Since I became First Minister, I have made clear my priority to alleviate poverty and tackle inequality in Scotland. Ensuring that everyone can do better in life will not only make Scotland fairer, but it will also make it a more prosperous place. — Nicola Sturgeon

We are here because we share a fundamental belief: that poverty, illiteracy, disease and inequality do not belong in the twenty-first century. We share a common purpose: to eradicate these ills for the benefit of all. And we share a common tool to achieve this: the Millennium Development Goals. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based. — Thomas Piketty

Objectively, the world is improving. To the elites, it’s falling apart as their long-lived institutions are flattened by the Internet. — Naval Ravikant

When women are able to live in a safe and secure environment, they can participate effectively in the economy and society. This helps overcome poverty, reduces inequalities and is beneficial for children's nutrition, health and school attendance. Every woman and girl has the right to live in safety in her home and community. — Helen Clark

White privilege is the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it. — Peggy McIntosh

China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx's class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable. — Sun Yat-sen

Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick- Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. — Chris Hedges

I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about. — James David Vance

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair. — John F. Kennedy

The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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

In Conclusion

Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of inequality quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about inequality to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.

Citation

Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of inequality quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.

Embed HTML Link

Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage