【赫临译笔】伟大与平等 - 心云驛站

收入相同的人，没有社会地位的不同，只有人生价值的不同。金钱算不了什么，真正重要的是人品，性格和能力。在一个收入平等的制度下，不是所有的工人都归于低工资标准，所有有钱人都归于高工资标准，每个人都能找到他自然的工资标准。社会上还会有大人物，普通人和小人物。但大人物是那些做大事的人，而不是那些母亲骄惯着，父亲给留下十万年薪的白痴。小人物是那些没有头脑，性格刻薄的人，而不是那些永远也没有机会的穷人。这正是白痴赞成收入不平等（只有这样，他们才能显赫），而真正的伟人却赞成平等的原因。

Between persons of equal income thereis no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing; character, conduct, and capacity are everything. Instead of all the workers being leveled down to low wage standards and all the rich leveled up to fashionable income standards, everybody under a system of equal incomes would find his orher own natural level. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things,and never the idiot whose mother had spoiled them and whose father had left a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (theironly chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.