{"quotes":[{"text":"Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.","author":"Friedrich August von Hayek","tags":["determination","inequality "],"id":1220,"author_id":"Friedrich+August+von+Hayek"},{"text":"You know and we know, as practical men that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength and that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.","author":"Thucydides","tags":["imperialism","inequality","war"],"id":4255,"author_id":"Thucydides"},{"text":"[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique.","author":"Moderata Fonte","tags":["crows","dignity","empowerment","envy","feminism","gender","hypocrisy","imagery","inequality","jealousy","men","merits","misogyny","suppression","ugliness","women","worth"],"id":5753,"author_id":"Moderata+Fonte"},{"text":"Never having experienced inequality, therefore, the majority of straight white men will be absolutely oblivious to their own advantages – not because they must necessarily be insensitive, sexist, racist, homophobic or unaware of the principles of equality; but because they have been told, over and over again, that there is no inequality left for them – or anyone else – to experience – and everything they have experienced up to that point will only have proved them right.Let the impact of that sink in for a moment.By teaching children and teenagers that equality already exists, we are actively blinding the group that most benefits from inequality – straight white men – to the prospect that it doesn’t. Privilege to them feels indistinguishable from equality, because they’ve been raised to believe that this is how the world behaves for everyone. And because the majority of our popular culture is straight-white-male-dominated, stories that should be windows into empathy for other, less privileged experiences have instead become mirrors, reflecting back at them the one thing they already know: that their lives both are important and free from discrimination.And this hurts men. It hurts them by making them unconsciously perpetrate biases they’ve been actively taught to despise. It hurts them by making them complicit in the distress of others. It hurts them by shoehorning them into a restrictive definition masculinity from which any and all deviation is harshly punished. It hurts them by saying they will always be inferior parents and caregivers, that they must always be active and aggressive even when they long for passivity and quietude, that they must enjoy certain things like sports and beer and cars or else be deemed morally suspect. It hurts them through a process of indoctrination so subtle and pervasive that they never even knew it was happening , and when you’ve been raised to hate inequality, discovering that you’ve actually been its primary beneficiary is horrifying – like learning that the family fortune comes from blood money.Blog post 4/12/2012: Why Teaching Equality Hurts Men.","author":"Foz Meadows","tags":["culture","equality","inequality","men","privilege"],"id":7567,"author_id":"Foz+Meadows"},{"text":"By defining the problem as 'hunger,' the emergency food system is helping to direct our attention away from the more fundamental problem of poverty, and the even more basic problem of inequality.","author":"Janet Poppendieck","tags":["emergency-food-programs","hunger","inequality","poverty"],"id":10136,"author_id":"Janet+Poppendieck"},{"text":"It's clear that equality doesn't quite cut it. Asking for a sliver of disproportionate power is too polite a request. I don't want to be included. Instead, I want to question who created the standard in the first place.","author":"Reni Eddo-Lodge","tags":["equality","inequality","power"],"id":14607,"author_id":"Reni+Eddo-Lodge"},{"text":"In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn’t unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large.The gates of the rich occasionally rattled, remained class. The poor took down one another, and the world’s great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace.","author":"Katherine Boo","tags":["capitalism","inequality","poor"],"id":15115,"author_id":"Katherine+Boo"},{"text":"The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.","author":"Thomas Piketty","tags":["education","inequality "],"id":15671,"author_id":"Thomas+Piketty"},{"text":"The low suffer most the blow of the law.","author":"Agona Apell","tags":["inequality","law","life","politics","quotes","on-life"],"id":24627,"author_id":"Agona+Apell"},{"text":"The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we'll really get paradise in return? We've seen it on television.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["capitalism","capitalist","consumerism","inequality","poor","religion","rich"],"id":25126,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":200,"pages":20,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}