Definition of Inequality

Inequality

The quality of being unequal; difference, or want of equality, in any respect; lack of uniformity; disproportion; unevenness; disparity; diversity; as, an inequality in size, stature, numbers, power, distances, motions, rank, property, etc.

Unevenness; want of levelness; the alternate rising and falling of a surface; as, the inequalities of the surface of the earth, or of a marble slab, etc.

Variableness; changeableness; inconstancy; lack of smoothness or equability; deviation; unsteadiness, as of the weather, feelings, etc.

Disproportion to any office or purpose; inadequacy; competency; as, the inequality of terrestrial things to the wants of a rational soul.

An expression consisting of two unequal quantities, with the sign of inequality (< or >) between them; as, the inequality 2 < 3, or 4 > 1.

An irregularity, or a deviation, in the motion of a planet or satellite from its uniform mean motion; the amount of such deviation.

Related Definitions:

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Inequality Quotations

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

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

What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.
B. R. Ambedkar

I remember becoming aware of women's issues and inequality. It became glaringly clear to me when I was living in America that women are regarded as less intelligent than men.
Julie Christie

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.
Friedrich August von Hayek

Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.
William Dean Howells

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Felix Frankfurter

The days of humiliation, of second-class citizens and of inequality are over and gone forever.
Gerry Adams

Everyone has an equal right to inequality.
John Ralston Saul

God touches and moves, warns and desires all equally, and He wants one quite as much as another. The inequality lies in the way in which His touch, His warnings, and His gifts are received.
Johannes Tauler

One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don't like to think of themselves as poor.
Jay-Z

Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.
Barney Frank

But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.
Barney Frank

And it also became clear that these conditions of inequality and historical injustice have given rise to a feeling of hate in the world - a deeply felt hate that cannot easily be overcome with a few good words.
Ulrich Beck

It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.
Paul Wellstone

Diversity on the bench is critical. As practitioners, you need judges who 'get it!' We need judges who understand what discrimination feels like. We need judges who understand what inequality feels like. We need judges who understand the subtleties of unfair treatment and who are willing to call it out when they see it!
Debbie Wasserman Schultz

The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems.
Eric Alterman

Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.
Eric Alterman

The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.
James F. Cooper

All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.
James F. Cooper

Another example of the educational inequality is the current debate over publicly financed school vouchers which will provide educational opportunities to a privileged handful, but deprive public schools of desperately needed resources.
Bobby Scott

The major economic policy challenges facing the nation today - pick your favorites among the usual suspects of low public and household savings, concerns about educational quality and achievement, high and rising income inequality, the large imbalances between our social insurance commitments and resources - are not about monetary policy.
Timothy Geithner

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.
Eric Alterman

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

It's much more acceptable for men to work and father kids. There's an inherent inequality, because we want to do it all, and I don't know how we can do this all.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus

A permanent division of labor inevitably creates occupational and class inequality and conflict.
Robert Shea

Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.
Mary Douglas

The equality among all members of the League, which is provided in the statutes giving each state only one vote, cannot of course abolish the actual material inequality of the powers concerned.
Hjalmar Branting

I think it's a very central tenet to it yes, it is. I can't bear it, I can't bear inequality, I can't bear bad behaviour to other people. I cannot bear it that people are mean to people who can't help what they are.
Janet Suzman

More Inequality Quotations

Inequality Translations

inequality in French is dissemblance
inequality in Italian is disuguaglianza
inequality in Norwegian is ulikhet
inequality in Spanish is desigualdad

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