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Quote by John Steinbeck

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The Pearl

This novella, set in the Mexican gulf coast, follows the story of a poor fisherman who discovers a magnificent pearl. The discovery brings him wealth and ambition, but also leads to tragedy and moral dilemmas. The story delves into the corrupting influence of sudden wealth and the consequences of human desires. more

Author

John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was an American author renowned for his profound depiction of American society and the lives of farmers. His works often explore themes of poverty, social injustice, and human nature. Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for his significant contribution to American literature. more

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“Everything about these times, I have to say, worries me, but that the majority of the human race - women, children, men - is subjected in various ways to the effects of inequality seems to me at the core of all the problems that consume us. Above all, inequality generates an extraordinary waste of minds and creative energies, which, if they were trained and put to use, would likely make our history an active laboratory for repairing the damage we’ve caused so far - or at least of controlling its effects, rather than an unbearable list of horrors. - from Incidental Inventions”

Inequality
Author:Elena Ferrante
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“What is the people's one desire, when once it has been stung by the democratic tarantula? It is that all men should be equal, and in consequence that all inequalities natural as well as artificial should disappear. It will not have artificial inequalities, nobility of birth, royal favours, inherited wealth, and so it is ready to abolish nobility, royalty, and inheritance. Nor does it like natural inequalities, that is to say a man more intelligent, more active, more courageous, more skillful than his neighbors. It cannot destroy these inequalities, for they are natural, but it can neutralize them, strike them with impotence by excluding them from the employments under its control. Democracy is thus led quite naturally, irresistibly one may say, to exclude the competent precisely because they are competent, or if the phrase pleases better and as the popular advocate would put it, not because they are competent but because they are unequal, or, as he would probably go on to say, if he wished to excuse such action, not because they are unequal, but because being unequal they are suspected of being opponents of equality. So it all comes to the same thing. This it is that made Aristotle say that where merit is despised, there is democracy. He does not say so in so many words, but he wrote: "Where merit is not esteemed before everything else, it is not possible to have a firmly established aristocracy," and that amounts to saying that where merit is not esteemed, we enter at once on a democratic regime and never escape from it.”

DemocracyInequalityIncompetence
Book:Le culte de l'incompétence
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“Solo al abrigo de aquella tapia protectora había arboles y frutas, flores, aromas, pájaros: después, todo cuanto rodeaba aquel lugar privilegiado se presentaba árido e inculto, todo tenía impreso el sello de la desolación y de la tristeza. Solo en los aristocráticos salones de aquella vivienda existían la riqueza y el lujo, el refinado gusto de la elegancia y todo lo que puede hacer soportable y aun querido un destierro. Fuera de allí, las casuchas que se hallaban diseminadas a corta distancia de aquel pequeño palacio, que parecía insultar osadamente la miseria que le rodeaba, eran de un aspecto lúgubre, llenas de pobreza y faltas de todo lo que puede hacer agradable la vida. Al mirarlas no podría menos de preguntarse uno a sí mismo si los que vivían en semejantes barracas tenían razón como nosotros, si eran hombres que pensaban y vivían y si, siendo así, no desesperaban de su suerte maldiciendo lo que todos los del universo deben maldecir.”

InequalityIrony
Book:La hija del mar
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“The territorial aristocracy of past ages was obliged by law, or thought itself obliged by custom, to come to the help of its servants and relieve their distress. But the industrial aristocracy of our day, when it has impoverished and brutalized the men it uses, abandons them in time of crisis to public charity to feed them. ... In any event, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in that direction. For if ever again permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy make their way into the world, it will have been by that door that they entered.”

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Book:Democracy in America
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