Equality Quotes

The civil rights movement in the United States was about the same thing, about equality of treatment for all sections of the people, and that is precisely what our movement was about.
– John Hume
The bill neither confers nor abridges the rights of anyone but simply declares that in civil rights there shall be equality among all classes of citizens and that all alike shall be subject to the same punishment.
– Lyman Trumbull
The basis, the corner-stone of this Government, was the perfect equality of the free, sovereign, and independent States which made it.
– Robert Toombs
The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization.
– Herbert Croly
The advocates of abortion on demand falsely assume two things: that women must suffer if the lives of unborn children are legally protected and that women can only attain equality by having the legal option of destroying their innocent offspring in the womb.
– Robert Casey
The 2010 global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum shows that countries with better gender equality have faster-growing, more competitive economies.
– Michelle Bachelet
Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else.
– Allen West
Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.
– Benjamin Tucker
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
– Samuel Johnson
Stewardesses are still paid so little that in many cases, new hires qualify for food stamps.
– Patricia Ireland
Socialism values equality more than liberty.
– Dennis Prager
So what we're talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we're facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.
– Bono
Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
– Honore de Balzac
Sinn Fein has demonstrated the ability to play a leadership role as part of a popular movement towards peace, equality and justice.
– Gerry Adams
Scotland is my country, the nation that shaped me, that taught me my values. A nation whose achievements inspired and inspire me, a community whose failings drive me - drive my overwhelming desire to fight for social justice and equality.
– Johann Lamont
Rosa Parks was the queen mother of a movement whose single act of heroism sparked the movement for freedom, justice and equality. Her greatest contribution is that she told us a regular person can make a difference.
– Marc Morial
Republican patience with how unionism deals with the political institutions, and with key issues like equality and human rights, will be tested because, obviously, there will be a battle a day on these matters. So lets face up to all of this with our eyes wide open.
– Gerry Adams
Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.
– Mary Douglas
Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit.
– Alveda King
Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.
– Rosa Parks
Propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India will become a modern nation. Minor blemishes cannot cloak the fact that India is becoming such a modern nation: no faith is in danger in our country, and the continuing commitment to gender equality is one of the great narratives of our times.
– Pranab Mukherjee
Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.
– Thomas Huxley
Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech.
– Samuel Alito
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie and the workers want no lying.
– Mikhail Bakunin
Our society needs to recognize the unstoppable momentum toward unequivocal civil equality for every gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered citizen of this country.
– Zachary Quinto
Our goals for this nation must be nothing less than to double the size of our economy and bring prosperity and jobs, ownership and equality of opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our nation's pockets of poverty.
– Jack Kemp
On the one hand we publicly pronounce the equality of all peoples on the other hand, in our immigration laws, we embrace in practice these very theories we abhor and verbally condemn.
– Emanuel Celler
Okay, when you start to fight for equality, like Anand did in 1995, you could end up losing game 10, like he did, without putting up any kind of fight.
– Vladimir Kramnik
OK, in all seriousness, I would say I couldn't be in a relationship without equality, generosity, integrity, spirit, kindness and humor. And awesomeness.
– Jennifer Aniston
Obviously, my life and my job in 2010 is very different from Peggy's experience in the 1960s. I exist in a world that enjoys more equality between men and women. But I don't take any of that into my performance. I just want to play the character as who she is as an individual - scene to scene.
– Elizabeth Moss
Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them.
– Mordecai Wyatt Johnson
Nobody really believes in equality anyway.
– Warren Farrell
No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men.
– Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Most of all, we should remember all of us are capable of individually helping advance the spirit of equality for all.
– Mike Rogers
Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are not bogged down by rules for equality, but have a firmly defined system of relative status and responsible command.
– Mary Douglas
Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't carry just a piece of cloth to symbolize his belief in racial equality he carried the American flag.
– Adrian Cronauer
Marriage equality changed life for people.
– Andrew Cuomo
Marriage equality is about more than just marriage. It's about something greater. It's about acceptance.
– Charlize Theron
Looking back, there is nothing wrong with that peace, love and equality that the hippies espoused. In many ways, we have regressed because they were into organic food, back to nature, make love not war, be good to all men, share and share alike - which is what many are talking about now.
– Imelda Staunton
Jackie Robinson, as an athlete and as someone who was trying to make a stand for equality, he was exemplary.
– Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
It wouldn't be fair to say that conservatives cherish property the way liberals cherish equality. But it would be fair to say that the takings clause is the conservatives' recipe for judicial activism just as they say liberals have misused the equal protection clause.
– Michael Kinsley
It will appear evident upon attentive consideration that equality of intellectual and physical advantages is the only sure foundation of liberty, and that such equality may best, and perhaps only, be obtained by a union of interests and cooperation in labor.
– Francis Wright
It is crucial that members of Congress cast votes that are supportive of the values upon which our nation was founded: equality, freedom, and opportunity for all people.
– Joe Baca
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
– Samuel Johnson
It became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.
– Zachary Quinto
Is there an equality of power between America and Iraq? Definitely not however, the Iraqi people are standing fast and are defending their land courageously.
– Bashar al-Assad
Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.
– Mary Douglas
Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them.
– B. R. Ambedkar
In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.
– Raoul Vaneigem
In the end no segregationist scheme has withstood the force of a simple idea: equality under law.
– Eric Liu
In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.
– Mary McCarthy
In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.
– Thomas Malthus
In a society in which equality is a fact, not merely a word, words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables.
– Catharine MacKinnon
In 1965, I marched for equality.
– Alphonso Jackson
If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present.
– Franz Boas
If money, education, and honesty will not bring to me as much privilege, as much equality as they bring to any American citizen, then they are to me a curse, and not a blessing.
– John Hope
I've always been hopeful about Scotland's prospects. And I now believe more than ever that Scotland is within touching distance of achieving independence and equality.
– Sean Connery
I'm an activist for gay marriage equality and children's rights. I'm the face of Share Our Strength.
– Sandra Lee
I would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States.
– Hideki Tojo
I want to work on respecting individuals' dignity. Equal rights, that's where my heart is. That means equal rights and benefits, and that's what we need.
– Christine Gregoire
I want to organize so that women see ourselves as people who are entitled to power, entitled to leadership.
– Patricia Ireland
I think men are allowed to be fat and bald and ugly and women aren't. And it's just not - there is no equality there.
– Connie Chung
I should like to suggest to you that the cause of all the economic troubles is that we have an economic system which tries to maintain an equality of value between two things, which it would be better to recognise from the beginning as of unequal value.
– Paul Dirac
I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman's equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals.
– Brigid Brophy
I joined the Labour party because I believed in equality, in freedom of speech and in tolerance, compassion and understanding for people, irrespective of their background and views. In whatever I decide to do in the future I will hold to those principles.
– Geoff Hoon
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I happen to agree with many of the liberal emphasis on compassion, justice and equality. I just disagree that it's the government's role to provide everything.
– Rick Warren
I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.
– George Smathers
I do not want to be the angel of any home: I want for myself what I want for other women, absolute equality. After that is secured, then men and women can take turns being angels.
– Agnes Macphail
I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.
– Susan Sontag
I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church - things like that - I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.
– Jimmy Carter
I believe that as women, we must commit ourselves to sustaining the progress made by our foremothers who fought so hard for women's equality and liberation.
– Carre Otis
I am fiscally prudent and socially progressive. I believe in protecting a woman's right to choose. I believe in marriage equality.
– Andrew Cuomo
I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.
– Theodore Bikel
How are men to be secured in any rights without instruction how to be secured in the equal exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge not talent, not genius, not inventive mental powers.
– Frances Wright
Here are the values that I stand for: honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values.
– Ellen DeGeneres
Give us equality of enjoyment, equal right to expansion - it is as necessary to our prosperity as yours.
– Robert Toombs
Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
– Mao Zedong
Gender equality will only be reached if we are able to empower women.
– Michelle Bachelet
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.
– Kofi Annan
From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.
– Mikhail Bakunin
From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own.
– Carl Schurz
From a viable economy to the full funding of Headstart, from a clean environment to true equality for women, from a strong military to a commitment to racial brotherhood, from schools that are honored to streets free of excessive violence.
– Paul Tsongas
Friendship is something that creates equality and mutuality, not a reward for finding equality or a way of intensifying existing mutuality.
– Rowan D. Williams
Free trade is very important if we respect equality among nations.
– Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
– Abraham Lincoln
For a modern woman it is important to be supported and that there is equality in every aspect, and that it's not two halves that make a whole - it's two wholes that make a whole.
– Katy Perry
For 25 years, it has been my privilege to represent the city of San Francisco and the great state of California to work to strengthen our vibrant middle class to secure opportunity and equality.
– Nancy Pelosi
Feudal societies don't create great cinema we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.
– Brian Cox
Feminism is just about equality, really, and there's so much stuff attached to the word, when it's actually so simple. I don't know why it's always so bogged down.
– Mia Wasikowska
Family law is institutionally anti-male. I've been lobbying MPs, and I'm not going to give up campaigning for equality until I get equality.
– Louis de Bernieres
Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that's not where equality comes from.
– Matt Bomer
Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.
– Friedrich August von Hayek
Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
– Barry Goldwater
Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.
– Tom G. Palmer
Equality is the soul of liberty there is, in fact, no liberty without it.
– Frances Wright
Equality implies individuality.
– Trey Anastasio
Equality is not in regarding different things similarly, equality is in regarding different things differently.
– Tom Robbins
Equality and development will not be achieved however if peace is not understood from women's' point of view.
– Jenny Shipley