Inequality

Isaiah Berlin - The assumption is that equality needs no reasons, only inequality does so…. If I have a cake and there are ten persons among whom I wish to divide it, then if I give exactly one tenth to each, this will not, at any rate automatically, call for justification; whereas if I depart from this principle of equal division I am expected to produce a special reason.

Steve Bruce - Profound inequalities of status are only tolerable and harmonious if, as in the Hindu caste system, the ranking is widely known and accepted. Soldiers can move from one regiment to another and still know their place because there is a uniform (in both senses) ranking system. In a complex and mobile society, it is not easy to know whether we are superior or subordinate to this new person. Once people have trouble knowing who should salute first, they stop saluting. Basic equality becomes the norm.  

Lewis Caroll (in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) - When they asked the Dodo who had won, he thought long and hard and then said, "Everybody has won and all must have prizes."

Robert Kaufman and Barbara Stallings - [An] important aspect of highly unequal societies is that upper-income groups are generally in a good position to resist direct taxation.

Eric Maurin (in Le Monde Magazine - 2 juillet 2010) - En France, les inégalités sont à chaque instant plus faibles qu'aux Etats-Unis, mais elles y sont aussi beaucoup plus permanentes.

Helmut Schoeck (in Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, 1966) - Most of the achievements which distinguish members of modern, highly developed and diversified societies from members of primitive societies—the development of civilization, in short—are the result of innumerable defeats inflicted on envy, i.e., on man as an envious being. 

Thomas Sowell - When people are confronted with a choice between hating themselves for their stagnation or hating others for their progress, they seldom hate themselves.

Thomas Sowell - Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

Thomas Sowell - I never cease to be amazed at how often people throw around the lofty phrase "social justice" without the slightest effort to define it. It cannot be defined because it is an attitude masquerading as a principle.

Thomas Sowell - Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, "social justice."

Attributed to John Steinbeck - Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Alexis de Tocqueville (in De la démocracie en Amérique, 1840) known as Tocqueville's Paradox - Il n'y a pas de si grande inégalité qui blesse les regards lorsque toutes les conditions sont inégales; tandis que la plus petite dissemblance paraît choquante au sein de l'uniformité générale; la vue en devient plus insupportable à mesure que l'uniformité est plus complète. Il est donc naturel que l'amour de l'égalité croisse sans cesse avec l'égalité elle-même; en le satisfaisant, on le développe.  English: When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity; the more complete this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes. Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on.

Alexis de Tocqueville (in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, 1856) - Les Français veulent l'égalité, et quand ils ne la trouvent pas dans la liberté, ils la souhaitent dans l'esclavage. English: The French want equality, and when they cannot find it through freedom, they wish to get it through slavery.