Socioeconomic Disparities Quotes

The best way to perpetuate poverty is spending on arms, and poverty itself is a form of violence. The wealthy industrialized countries have been too slow to recognize this. I hope that in this new century and new millennium, the world will learn that if you want peace, you must prepare for peace, plan for peace, work for it, and comply with its dictates. Lasting peace will never be achieved with the instruments of war.

I am sympathetic to developing countries’ concerns: because of our emissions it’s their crops that will disappear; because of our inaction, it’s their fields that turn to desert...

I believe hip hop is being used in some mass way to influence underachievement.

No one so poignantly realizes the failures in the social structure as the man at the bottom, who has been most directly in contact with those failures and has suffered most.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

No matter where you from, there's ghettos all over the place.

I'm writing about the things I see all around me. Growing up in Mississippi, I've seen how these backward ideas about class and race and healthcare and education and housing and racism impact everyday lives. For example, my mother wouldn't let me go to my homecoming dance because the yacht club where they were having the dance threw a fundraiser for David Duke, an ex-Klan member, when he was running for governor of Louisiana. So I grew up seeing how personal politics could be.

The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment... It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society.

No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe they [Blacks] may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.

The challenges that I face today are the same challenges we all face. Trying to balance your life between work, family, loved ones, your husband, your wife - boyfriend or girlfriend. If you have kids - balancing that, balancing your work with the time you spend with your kids. The idea of wanting to be a good parent and then the motivation to be a great parent. Whether you're black, white, any color. Rich, poor, regardless of religion, cousins of culture, we go through those. We have the same challenges.

Now, I will say, most American companies - most are run by honorable patriotic people who care about their employees and communities. But there are still too many powerful interests fighting to protect their own profits and privileges at the expense of everyone else.

The situation is that in Germany capitalism has remained, classes and class struggle have remained which all the same will break into the open, which includes also the field of struggle of parties representing opposing classes just as it broke through in, let us say, Spain.

Education will not cure all the problems of society, but without it no cure for any problem is possible.

People say that the monetary system produces incentive. This may be true in limited areas, but it also produces greed, embezzlement, corruption, pollution, jealousy, anger, crime, war, poverty, tremendous scarcity, and unnecessary human suffering. You have to look at the entire picture.

Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple; the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.

We have a rise of extremism because we need to give a sense that we are targeting some of the deeper problems in Greece, the injustices.

Generally speaking in America, a lot of environmentally problematic facilities tend to be located in places where poor folks live because wealthier folks have the ability to say, "not in my backyard."

I fear very much for our kids, for low income people and for seniors.

I am particularly surprised that certain outlets look at pass rates irrespective of student population. As if inner city high school kids are to fare as well as college students.

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

...how can we live in the richest, most privileged country in the world, at the peak of its economic performance, and still hear the Republicans, and too many Democrats, that we cannot afford to provide a good education for every child, that we cannot afford to provide health security for all our citizens?

Too many of the conflicts which are caused today are caused by the problems that emerge from people who are in poverty.

I think we are making progress, but we have long way to go. People also have got to understand the agenda that we are fighting for. This is a senator who has taken on every powerful special interest, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's drug companies who are ripping off the American people, the military industrial complex.

The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.