#inequality

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines? ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#colonialism #imperialism #inequality #poverty #race

What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#courtship #discord #disharmony #empowerment #gender

If people lived to be a thousand years old, there’d be extreme inequality, based not on class like now, but on genetics. Think how far behind unmotivated and lazy people lag now after only 65 years on earth, and then multiply that by 15.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#class #classism #earth #genetics #inequality

A rather vicious cycle has been at work for years. Reduced taxes on the rich leave them with more money to influence politicians and politics. Their influence wins them further tax reductions, which gives them still more money to put to political use. When the loss of tax revenue from the rich worsens already strained government budgets, the rich press politicians to cut public services and government jobs and not even debate a return to the higher taxes the rich used to pay. So it goes – from Washington, to Wisconsin, to New York City. ↗

— Richard Wolff How the rich soaked the rest of us Guardian March

#equality #inequality #inequity #politics #rich

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

#equality #inequality #equality

Es gibt Menschen, die es zeitlebens einem Bettler nachtragen, daß sie ihm nichts gegeben haben. ↗

— Karl Kraus

#critical #criticism #equality #inequality #life

Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men's striving for what is equal. ↗

— Aristotle

#inequality #equality

Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas... ↗

— E.M. Forster

#democracy #equality #inequality #equality

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#ceos #corporations #delusion #inequality #service

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

— Aristotle

#form #inequality #make #things #try