Equality quotes
583 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"I'll tell you how I'd like to be remembered: As a black man who won the heavyweight title - Who has humorous and who never looked down on those who looked up to him - A man who stood for freedom, justice and equality - And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was."
"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."
"All men by nature are equal in that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man; being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions."
"I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality."
"There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside equality — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe."
"Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today."
"In a composite Nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the Law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship equal rights and a common destiny for all. A government that cannot or does not protect the humblest citizen in his right to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, should be reformed or overthrown, without delay."
"Equal rights for all, special privileges for none"
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."
"To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow."
"True community is based on upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together."
"To me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality."
"Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance."
"Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality"
"The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'"
"These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have."
"the public sphere is as consistently based on the law of equality as the private sphere is based on the law of universal difference and differentiation. Equality, in contrast to all that is involved in mere existence, is not given us, but is the result of human organization insofar as it is guided by the principle of justice. We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights."
"IT IS TIME THAT WE ALL SEE GENDER AS A SPECTRUM INSTEAD OF TWO SETS OF OPPOSING IDEALS."
"The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women."
"None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."
"The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others."
"Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion."
"I don’t hold with equality in all things only with equality before the law and nothing more."
"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
