The first step in providing economic equality for women is to ensure a stable economy in which every person who wants to work can work.
—Jimmy Carter (b.1924) American Head of State, Military Leader
The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
—Lillian Hellman (1905–84) American Dramatist, Memoirist
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
—Allen Ginsberg (1926–97) American Poet, Activist
It’s an odd thing about this universe that, though we all disagree with each other, we are all of us always in the right.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with; and there are few giants or dwarfs.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. Theyll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
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.
—Malcolm X (1925–65) American Civil Rights Leader
Equality is the life of conversation; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any part above another, as he who considers himself below the rest of society.
—Richard Steele (1672–1729) Irish Writer, Politician
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Death and the cross are the two great levellers; kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places—at the foot of the cross, and in the silence of the grave.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
The tears of the red, yellow, black, brown and white man are all the same.
—Martin H. Fischer
The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.
—Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist
The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold…. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, and ordered their estate.
—Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–95) Anglo-Irish Children’s Hymn Writer, Poet
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.
—Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) Italian Catholic Priest, Philosopher, Theologian
Let them ease their hearts with prate of equal rights, which man never knew.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Equality is what does not exist among mortals.
—e. e. cummings (1894–1962) American Poet, Writer, Painter
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
—Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American Political Writer, Publisher
It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to think.
—Rene Descartes (1596–1650) French Mathematician, Philosopher
Men are by nature unequal.—It is rain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.
—James Anthony Froude (1818–94) British Historian, Novelist, Biographer, Editor
Come forward, some great marshal, and organize equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
You cannot have all chiefs; you gotta have Indians too.
—U.S. Proverb
The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American Novelist