The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal
Not Aristotle — a modern misquoteUnknown — a 20th-century coinage falsely pinned on AristotleAphorism surfaced c. mid-1970s · found in no work of Aristotle (384–322 BC)
This neat aphorism appears nowhere in Aristotle’s writings. It is a modern coinage—traced by classicist Joel Christensen to roughly the mid-1970s—that actually inverts Aristotle’s point. Aristotle argued that justice is proportional: equality for equals, inequality for unequals (Politics 1280a), but he never framed it as a slogan against making things equal, and this exact wording is not his.
“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal” Not Aristotle — this exact line appears in none of his works. It is a modern aphorism (c. 1970s) that distorts his real argument for proportional justice in Politics 1280a.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Aristotle. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
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Provenance
The source
Claimed author
Aristotle (384–322 BC)
Genuine parallel
Politics, Book III, 1280a
Translation
Benjamin Jowett (1885), public domain
Status
Modern misquotation — not in Aristotle
Justice is thought by them to be, and is, equality, not however, for all, but only for equals. And inequality is thought to be, and is, justice; neither is this for all, but only for unequals.
What Aristotle actually wrote (Politics 1280a, Jowett translation). He is describing proportional justice—not sloganeering that equalizing is the “worst form of inequality.” The popular quote has no counterpart anywhere in his texts.
The line is absent from Aristotle’s corpus; his nearest genuine statement is the proportional-justice passage at Politics 1280a.
Classicist Joel Christensen dissects the fake and dates its appearance to “the mid-seventies” in Sententiae Antiquae.
The closest real ancient sentiment belongs to Pliny the Younger—“nothing is more unequal than that equality” (Letters 2.12.5)—not to Aristotle.
The popular aphorism has no identifiable source—it is a modern coinage (c. 1970s) attached to Aristotle, so no copyright or public-domain status can be honestly asserted for it. Aristotle’s genuine Politics passage is ancient and in the public domain, and the Jowett translation quoted here (1885) is likewise public domain.
Fact-check
Often misattributed
Plastered across quote sites and social feeds under Aristotle’s name, this line is a modern invention that turns his subtle argument about proportional justice into an anti-egalitarian slogan he never wrote.
✕
The exact wordingAristotle Fabricated
The sentence appears in none of Aristotle’s surviving works. Classicist Joel Christensen traces its circulation only to “the mid-seventies” and calls it flatly fake in Sententiae Antiquae.
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What he really arguedAristotle Distorted
In Politics 1280a Aristotle says justice is equality for equals and inequality for unequals—a theory of proportional fairness, not a warning that equalizing is the “worst form of inequality.”
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The nearest genuine ancient sourcePliny the Younger Different author
The closest real classical line is Pliny’s “nothing is more unequal than that equality” (Letters 2.12.5), with a related sentiment in Cicero’s Republic—Roman, not Aristotelian.
✓Aristotle never wrote it: the slogan is a 20th-century coinage that inverts his real argument for proportional justice in Politics 1280a.
Context
Why this misquote sticks
The phrasing is seductive because it sounds like something Aristotle could have said—he really did argue that justice is proportional, giving equals equal shares and unequals unequal ones. But that careful ethical claim is not the same as the blunt modern slogan, which is typically deployed to argue against efforts to reduce inequality.
Because the underlying idea has a genuine Aristotelian flavor, the fabricated wording slips past casual fact-checking and keeps recirculating on quote databases and social media, lending ancient authority to a distinctly modern political argument.
It sounds like Aristotle—which is exactly why the fake sticks.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
384–322 BC · Greek philosopher; pupil of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great
Aristotle of Stagira was the founder of the Lyceum and one of the most influential thinkers in the Western tradition, writing on logic, ethics, biology, and politics. In the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics he developed a theory of proportional or distributive justice—that treating equals equally and unequals unequally is what fairness requires. That genuine idea is the seed later writers distorted into the punchy modern slogan wrongly stamped with his name.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Genuine parallel: Aristotle, Politics III.9 (Bekker 1280a), trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885). The popular aphorism is unattested in Aristotle; earliest circulation traced to the mid-1970s per Joel Christensen, “Fake Aristotle Fakely Rails Against Fighting Inequality,” Sententiae Antiquae, 23 March 2019.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-worst-form-of-inequality-is-to-try-to-make-unequal