Unfairness Quotes

“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves!

“I am a person who is unhappy with things as they stand. We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth because of the injustice of things.”
― Hugo Claus

“It was then that Hook bit him.
Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence.”
― Christine de Pizan, Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love

“I will never deny that life isn't fair. It seems as though when a woman leaves a man she is strong and independent, but when a man leaves a woman he is a pig and a jerk.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Yet if women are so flighty, fickle, changeable, susceptible, and inconstant (as some clerks would have us believe), why is it that their suitors have to resort to such trickery to have their way with them? And why don't women quickly succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in conquering them? For there is no need to go to war for a castle that is already captured. (...)

Therefore, since it is necessary to call on such skill, ingenuity, and effort in order to seduce a woman, whether of high or humble birth, the logical conclusion to draw is that women are by no means as fickle as some men claim, or as easily influenced in their behaviour. And if anyone tells me that books are full of women like these, it is this very reply, frequently given, which causes me to complain. My response is that women did not write these books nor include the material which attacks them and their morals. Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence. But if women had written these books, I know full well the subject would have been handled differently. They know that they stand wrongfully accused, and that the cake has not been divided up equally, for the strongest take the lion's share, and the one who does the sharing out keeps the biggest portion for himself.”
― Christine de Pizan, Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love

“Unfairness – this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damm lucky by Indian standards. Let’s be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don’t. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don’t get literary praise. It’s ok. I don’t look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It’s ok. Don’t let unfairness kill your spark”
― Chetan Bhagat

“It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?”
― Damon Knight, One Side Laughing: Stories Unlike Other Stories

“And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.”
― C.S. Lewis (The Horse and His Boy)

“We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just because they hate us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I decry the injustice of my wounds, only to look down and see that I am holding a smoking gun in one hand and a fistful of ammunition in the other.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The other thing that I would say about writer's block is that it can be very, very subjective. By which I mean, you can have one of those days when you sit down and every word is crap. It is awful. You cannot understand how or why you are writing, what gave you the illusion or delusion that you would every have anything to say that anybody would ever want to listen to. You're not quite sure why you're wasting your time. And if there is one thing you're sure of, it's that everything that is being written that day is rubbish. I would also note that on those days (especially if deadlines and things are involved) is that I keep writing. The following day, when I actually come to look at what has been written, I will usually look at what I did the day before, and think, "That's not quite as bad as I remember. All I need to do is delete that line and move that sentence around and its fairly usable. It's not that bad." What is really sad and nightmarish (and I should add, completely unfair, in every way. And I mean it -- utterly, utterly, unfair!) is that two years later, or three years later, although you will remember very well, very clearly, that there was a point in this particular scene when you hit a horrible Writer's Block from Hell, and you will also remember there was point in this particular scene where you were writing and the words dripped like magic diamonds from your fingers -- as if the Gods were speaking through you and every sentence was a thing of beauty and magic and brilliance. You can remember just as clearly that there was a point in the story, in that same scene, when the characters had turned into pathetic cardboard cut-outs and nothing they said mattered at all. You remember this very, very clearly. The problem is you are now doing a reading and you cannot for the life of you remember which bits were the gifts of the Gods and dripped from your fingers like magical words and which bits were the nightmare things you just barely created and got down on paper somehow!! Which I consider most unfair. As a writer, you feel like one or the other should be better. I wouldn't mind which. I'm not somebody who's saying, "I really wish the stuff from the Gods was better." I wouldn't mind which way it went. I would just like one of them to be better. Rather than when it's a few years later, and you're reading the scene out loud and you don't know, and you cannot tell. It's obviously all written by the same person and it all gets the same kind of reaction from an audience. No one leaps up to say, "Oh look, that paragraph was clearly written on an 'off' day."


It is very unfair. I don't think anybody who isn't a writer would ever understand how quite unfair it is.”
― Neil Gaiman

“The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get.”
― Robert Buettner, Overkill

“It's unfair."
As a rule, life is unfair," I said.
Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things."
To Dick?"
Yeah."
I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“I used to belong to a family unit, with a foster mom and dad and my little sister, Bean, but that's over and I don't want to talk about what happened , or how unfair it was. Not yet. The less said about that the better, because if there's one thing I learned from Ryter it's that you can't always be looking backward or something will hit you from the front.”
― Rodman Philbrick, The Last Book in the Universe

“Stand up for what is right against the wrong.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.”
― Andrew Marvell

“There was nothing predictable in this life, and very little that was fair.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“If we keep telling that life is unfair but do nothing serious about it, then life will forever continue to remain unfair!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“How heavy it is to be the only one that carries all the boulders of burdens when once agreed to be a mutual share of suffering?”
― D C de Oliveira, Muted: Poetic Abstraction

“The Way of heaven takes away where there's abundance
and restores where there's want,
but the Way of humankind isn't like that:
it takes away where there's want
and gives where there's abundance.

Verse 77
(Hinton translation)”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“In the case of George and the Dragon – an encounter in which the dice were theologically loaded – any morally sentient human being must surely sympathise with the poor dragon.”
― Julian Barnes, Elizabeth Finch

“A loud squawking sound split the air. Then another, filling the space with piercing shrieks.
"What is that?" Sophie said. "A velociraptor? A rabid monkey?"
Jasmine shook her head. "Remember the ten-feet warning? The peacocks like to impress the peahens."
"What is a peahen?" Nina asked. What kind of a name was that for anything?
"Peacocks are the male birds with those big plumes," Jasmine explained. "Peahens are the females."
"Why do the men get the pretty feathers?" Sophie asked.
"Like most things, I blame the patriarchy.”
― Erin La Rosa, For Butter or Worse

“There is nothing more uncomfortable than a son being cruel to his mother. It is the epitome of unfairness, and rarely did these sons own a mirror that revealed how irrationally brutal their treatment was.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, A Happy Ghost

“We are often our own worst enemies. We create our own limitations and then complain that life is unfair.”
― Carlos Wallace, Life is not Complicated, You Are

“A person who treats someone unfairly may start to show a tendency to be unfair to other people, or he may regret what he did and never act unfairly to others! What usually happens is the former!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“We can spend our lives decrying the injustices that befall us, or we can respond to the far greater cry that calls us to rise in determined force against them.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“He was crying, because the red marks of the whip on his back still hurt so terribly. But he was also crying because people were so beastly and unfair, and because he was only a boy and couldn’t do anything against them. Linda was crying too. She was grown up, but she wasn’t big enough to fight against three of them. It wasn’t fair for her either.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“You can tell yourself that the uneven ground you've had to traverse has made you nimble, and you may feel better for your nimbleness.

It still doesn't make it fair.

But when you do the work, you own the skills. They can't be lost or taken away. They are yours to keep and use forever.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times