Inequality Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old inequality quotes, inequality sayings, and inequality proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Inequality and hierarchy are natural, but that doesn't mean they are right, that doesn't mean there is isn't a productive tension between those forces and the forces of equality. Chris Hayes
If you're perpetuating discrimination, you're perpetuating inequality. Ellen Page
Inequality is bad for everyone, not just the middle class and the poor. Robert Reich
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. Aristotle
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. Thomas Carlyle
Inequalities of Fate very curious. Should like, on this account, to believe in Reincarnation. E. M. Delafield
The inequality between the world's individuals is staggering. Zygmunt Bauman
It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence. Voltaire
You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society. Rem Koolhaas
Inequality is not just an issue between individuals, between classes, between regions. It's between urban and rural. Michael Ignatieff
Inequality promotes progress. James Cook
Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another. Plato
Growing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism. Adam Hochschild
Rising inequality isn't about who has the knowledge; it's about who has the power. Paul Krugman
Inequality doesn't create unhappiness. Timothy Noah
A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities. Joseph Stalin
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off. Frans De Waal
Massive inequality, we have learned, isn't the best way to run an economy after all. And when you think about it, it's also profoundly ugly. Thomas Frank
Inequality is a terrible waste of time, a waste of people's resources. Jeremy Corbyn
Poverty and wealth inequality are a form of instability into the future. Tavis Smiley
The inequality of income and fortunes is essential in capitalism. Ludwig Von Mises
Gender inequality is not one problem, it's a collection of problems. Amartya Sen
Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class. Matthew Arnold
Everyone has an equal right to inequality. John Ralston Saul
Rising inequality is a cultural and economic cancer on a lot of different levels. Kevin Drum
You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable. Amartya Sen
Income inequality and wage stagnation finally took their place among the principal moral issues of our time. David Rolf
The higher the coefficient of inequality (Gini coefficient) in a society, the worse things tend to be for those at the bottom. Catherine Wilson
Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised. Nicholas Kristof
Income inequality matters more on a day-to-day basis. Wealth matters more for political influence. Thomas Pogge
Inequality of any kind, once considered a normal, natural part of human existence, came to be seen in the course of the twentieth century as increasingly illegitimate. Michael Mandelbaum
Inequality is the inevitable consequence of liberty. Salvador De Madariaga
When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth. Thomas Piketty
True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world. Felix Emanuel Schelling
Inequality is the cause of all local movements. Leonardo da Vinci
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
Education is not the only answer and it's certainly not the immediate solution. At best, it's a necessary, but not sufficient response to widening inequality. Robert Reich
Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year. Polly Toynbee
Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another. Inequality undermines democracy. George Packer
Inequality is the root of social evil. Pope Francis
Rising inequality is toxic to growth. High levels of inequality exclude people - both as innovators and customers - diminishing both innovation and demand. Nick Hanauer
Do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make the truth appear where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true. William Shakespeare
Voices previously drowned out...can have special meaning in the struggle to eradicate inequality. Allan Hutchinson
The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. Mark Twain
Though we travel in the same group, we are not therefore alike. Yoruba Proverb
There is no equality in people's fortunes. Yoruba Proverb
But while inequality is Heaven made, equality is the work of sage-man. Therefore, all his institutions and moral principles aim at eventual equality. Kang Youwei
The regard that domestic bird enjoys is denied the vulture; the regard a slave receives is not the same as a freeborn enjoys. Yoruba Proverb
A world without poverty / Cause with Nobility / Gender equality / Always a reality / Remove the ambiguity / Remains Clarity. K.V. Srikanth
The fact of inequality generates the competition that determines status and standing and prestige and therefore success and failure in life. James K. Galbraith
The constitution does not provide for first and second-class citizens. Wendell Willkie
Make all men equal today, and God has so created them that they shall all be unequal tomorrow. Anthony Trollope
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. Honoré de Balzac
When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody. W.S Gilbert
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people. Thomas Jefferson
There is so much wealth and so much misery at the same time, that it seems incredible that people can endure such class difference, and accept such a form of hunger while on the other hand, the millionaires throw away millions on stupidities. Frida Kahlo
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States senator. Mary Harris Jones
The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes. Noah Webster
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. Plutarch
The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health, and social mobility are all threatened. Helene D. Gayle
As long as poverty, injustice, and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest. Nelson Mandela
We're all burdened by our history of racial inequality. It's created a kind of smog that we all breathe in, and it has prevented us from being healthy. Bryan Stevenson
Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself. William Dean Howells
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. Adam Smith
A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little. Bernie Sanders
Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow. Ralph Waldo Emerson
People differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Popo Leo XVIII
Inequality and hierarchy are natural, but that doesn't mean they are right, that doesn't mean there isn't a productive tension between those forces and the forces of equality. Chris Hayes