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Equality is the right of different groups of people to have equal opportunity, rights and treatment

• Equality:  The state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities.  Oxford Dictionary
• Equality:   The right of different groups of people to have a similar social position and receive the same treatment.  Cambridge Dictionary
• The true meaning of the word “Equality” is–“No one better off than I am.”  Eliza Cook
• Fairness,  Justice,  Democracy,  Respect,  Tolerance

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Equality is the principle and belief that all people are born equal in dignity and human rights

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.  United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1
• We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  US Declaration of Independence
• All men are born equally free. Salmon P. Chase
• All men are by nature equal, all made of the same earth by one Workman; and however we may deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.  Plato
• 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. Thomas Jefferson
• I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The first great political truth to be impressed on the minds of our youth is, that they are born free, and that no acts of legislation should deprive them of perfect equality in rights. This principle will constantly stimulate those of humble birth to compete with with favorites of fortune, and teach them that without personal merit, no one can have just claims to honorable distinction.  Isaac S. Smith
• As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don’t think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, ‘I’m probably no better than you, but I’m certainly your equal. Harper Lee
• Equality lies only in human moral dignity…. Let there be brothers first, then there will be brotherhood, and only then will there be a fair sharing of goods among brothers.  Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few to ride them. Thomas Jefferson
• Dignity

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Equality is about equal opportunity

• Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity. Irving Kristol
• Equal opportunity is good, but special privilege is better. Anna Chennault
• Equality of opportunity is an equal opportunity to prove unequal talents. David Samue
• The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.   Anna Garlin Spencer
• The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality fo result. Its equality of opportunity. There’s a fundamental difference. Robert Reich
• A federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of social justice, to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity to most of the children born into the world, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history.  H. G. Wells
• Opportunity

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Equality is about equal rights

• From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor’s interests without striking a dangerous blow at your own.  Carl Schurz
• I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights. Dr. Seuss
• 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. Alice Paul
• Thought of equality- as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same. Walt Whitman

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Equality is about equal status in the eyes of the law

• Equal laws protecting equal rights…the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country. James Madison
• No man is above the law, and no man is below it. Theodore Roosevelt
• The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law. Aristotle

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Equality is about equal access to education

• Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society. Sonia Sotomayor
• Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.  Will Durant
• The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education … (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.  John Dewey
• A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm. Jostein Gaarder
• If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.  Plato
• Education

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Equality irrespective of gender

• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.  Gloria Steinem
• Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole. Mao Zedong
• I want for myself what I want for other women, absolute equality. Agnes Macphail
• Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality Thomas Jefferson
• Never, till woman stands side by side with man, his equal in the eye of the law as well as the Creator, will the high destiny of the race be accomplished.  C. L. SHOLES
• One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man.  Marlo Thomas
• The first woman was created from the rib of a man. She was not made from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal to him. Sophia Loren
• The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as unqualified as some of the men who are already there. Maureen Reagan
• I want to organize so that women see ourselves as people who are entitled to power, entitled to leadership. Patricia Ireland
• Gender equality

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Equality irrespective of race

• As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. Abraham Lincoln
• Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power. Barbara Jordan
• I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man. Nelson Mandela
• I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• 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. William Faulkner

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Equality irrespective of sexual orientation

• I’m a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being… by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant. Paul Newman

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Equality in relationships and marriage

• Relationships are all about trust and equality. If one person shares, then the other person should share, too.  Sophie Kinsella
• I am fiscally prudent and socially progressive. I believe in protecting a woman’s right to choose. I believe in marriage equality. Andrew Cuomo
• Marriage equality is about more than just marriage. It’s about something greater. It’s about acceptance. Charlize Theron
• Marriage

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Equality in pay

• Equal pay isn’t just a women’s issue; when women get equal pay, their family incomes rise and the whole family benefits. Michael M. Honda
• When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait that long.   Lya Sorano
• We want rights. The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the interest.  Lucy Stone

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Equality in friendship

• Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It’s how true friends talk. Peggy Noonan
• Friendship is something that creates equality and mutuality, not a reward for finding equality or a way of intensifying existing mutuality.  Rowan D. Williams
• Friendship

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Equality for animals

• All the arguments to prove man’s superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals. Peter Singer
• Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind’s capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don’t; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.  Matthew Scully
• We are called to treat animals with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don’t; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.  Matthew Scully
• Animals

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Equality, many argue, is the highest of all human values

• To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values – above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism. Herbert Read
• Humanistic values of equality and equal rights for all nations and individuals as crystallized in the principles of the United Nations Charter are mankind’s great achievements in the 20th century. Tran Duc Luong
• I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.  Vidal Sassoon 
• I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people. Rosa Parks
• Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart. Honore de Balzac
• Values,  Principles

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A society based on equality has long been a dream for many; a dream to strive for …

• I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.  Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood. Josephine Baker
• This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.  Gloria Steinem

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… something fought for long and hard by civil right movements

• Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens. David Cameron
• In the 1960s we were fighting to be recognized as equals in the marketplace, in marriage, in education and on the playing field. It was a very exciting, rebellious time. Marlo Thomas
• Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. Malcolm X
• 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
• The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• The March on Washington affirmed our values as a people: equality and opportunity for all. Forty-one years ago, during a time of segregation, these were an ideal. Leonard Boswell
• The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Equality is a belief in the “brotherhood” of man, for we are all members of the human family

• Brotherhood: The belief that all people should act with warmth and equality toward one another, regardless of differences in nationality, creed, ethnicity, etc.  Dictionary.com
• Brotherhood:  The feeling of kinship with and closeness to a group of people or all people. Oxford Dictionary
• We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Equality lies only in human moral dignity…. Let there be brothers first, then there will be brotherhood, and only then will there be a fair sharing of goods among brothers.  
• I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• We are all brothers under the skin – and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.  Ayn Rand
• Unless man is committed to the belief that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality.  Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
• When I look at a person, I see a person – not a rank, not a class, not a title.  Criss Jami, Killosophy
• I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being–neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.   Malcolm X
• Race, gender, religion, sexuality, we are all people and that’s it. We’re all people. We’re all equal.  Connor Franta

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Equality is the recognition we are all the same inside

• The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould…. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes.  Michel de Montaigne, translated
• The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons.  Oliver Wendell Holmes
• The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference. William Makepeace Thackeray
• The tears of the red, yellow, black, brown and white man are all the same.  Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
• We are all brothers under the skin – and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.  Ayn Rand
• Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people. James Russell Lowell
• Whether thou be king or peasant, I shall remember only that thou art a soul. Though thy raiment be of hodden gray, yet I shall speak to royalty, and though it be of ermine, I shall speak only to the peasant heart beneath.  Muriel Strode Lieberman
• You cannot have all chiefs; you gotta have Indians too. Perfect love cannot be without equality. A friend to everybody and to nobody is the same thing. We are all alike, on the inside. Mark Twain
• As experience widens, one begins to see how much upon a level all human things are.  Joseph Farrell
• Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red. Clive Barker
• If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”. – (Act III, scene I).   William Shakespeare

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Equality is synonymous with justice and fairness …

• Justice: Fairness in the way people are dealt with.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality. Plato
• Fairness: The quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable.  Cambridge Dictionary
• I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people. Rosa Parks
• … the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.  Will Durant 
• Justice,  Fairness

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… although not all agree

• The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice. Friedrich Nietzsche

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Equality is necessary for order in society to endure

• A resilient people cherishing liberty and equality and the rule of law will endure. Nick Rahall
• Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining.  Alan Moore 

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Equality is the antithesis of discrimination and stereotyping

• Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.  Steven Pinker
• People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn’t bother me. It’s other people doing the calling that bothers me.  Octavia E. Butler

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Equality is the antithesis of domination

• It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence… and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect.  Manitonquat
• For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute cooperation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family. Bertrand Russell

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Equality is at the heart of democracy

• The love of democracy is that of equality.  Charles de Montesquieu
• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Abraham Lincoln
• Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. Alexis de Tocqueville
• Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely. Aristotle
• Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity. Irving Kristol
• Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. Alexis de Tocqueville
• I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. Nelson Mandela
• If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.  Aristotle
• The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.   Anna Garlin Spencer
• Democracy

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True equality is not about conformity or similarity

• 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
• As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. Steven Pinker
• Equality is not similarity. Equal merit does not mean that one is suited to the same tasks.  George Sand
• Conformity

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True equality recognises differences and individuality

• Equality implies individuality. Trey Anastasio
• Equality is not in regarding different things similarly, equality is in regarding different things differently. Tom Robbins
• One man isn’t any better than another, not because they are equal, but because they are intrinsically other, that there is no term of comparison. D. H. Lawrence
• One must remember equality, yet also be aware of difference, for if the people are allowed to act as it pleases them without coming up against displeasure, if one gives rein to its desires without setting [any] limit, it becomes confused and can no longer take delight in anything. Xunzi
• Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.  Terry Eagleton
• People are pretty much alike. It’s only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.  Linda Ellerbee
• When each thing is unique in itself, there can be no comparison made…. There is only this strange recognition of present otherness. D. H. Lawrence
• Democracy and equality try to deny the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority. D. H. Lawrence
• We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.  Maya Angelou
• We are all equal in the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colours and all cultures are distinct & individual. We are harmonious in the reality that we are all held to this earth by the same gravity. We don’t share blood, but we share the air that keeps us alive. I will not blind myself and say that my black brother is not different from me. I will not blind myself and say that my brown sister is not different from me. But my black brother is he as much as I am me. But my brown sister is she as much as I am me.  C. JoyBell C.
• Diversity

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Many argue that equality does not exist in practice …

• Is there equality before the law? At every stage of the judicial process–facing the policeman, appearing in court, being freed on bond, being sentenced by the judge–the poor person is treated worse than the rich, the black treated worse than the white, the politically or personally odd character is treated worse than the orthodox.  Howard Zinn
• It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other. Samuel Johnson
• No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. George Orwell
• By nature, all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments. Thomas Aquinas
• Although the Jeffersonian Law (“All men are created equal”) is the first article of the American faith, the facts of American life have demonstrated for some time now that it is an irksome faith to live by. Alistair Cooke
• No laws of equal freedom piled heaven high could give rights to the common people. Only the rulers have rights.  Horace Traubel
• The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.  Anatole France
• The only place where you can find equality is in the cemetery.  Evan Esar
• We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.  Derrick A. Bell
• We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us. Lionel Trilling
• You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.  Arthur Ashe
• The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule. James Bovard
• Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.  Thucydides

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… one reason being that the desire for equality operates mainly upwards …

• In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.  Bertrand Russell
• His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants’ hall. James M. Barrie
• Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.  Will Durant
• The defect of equality is that we desire it only with our superiors. Henry Becque

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… and there is an innate competitive instinct in the human psyche 

• All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with a mighty urge to become otherwise.  Evan Esar
• All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality. David Allan Coe
• As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance. Mason Cooley

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Some argue equality is unattainable …

• All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.  George Orwell
• Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. Honore de Balzac
• Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.  H. L. Mencken
• Nobody really believes in equality anyway. Warren Farrell
• Nothing is so unequal as equality.  Pliny The Elder
• So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.  Samuel Johnson
• The equalization of fortunes may have some slight tendency to stifle animosity and to prevent dissension. But its effect is always inconsiderable, and often doubtful; since those who think themselves entitled to superiority will not patiently brook equality.  Aristotle
• We are not all equal, nor can we be so. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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… but should be sought nevertheless

• We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace. Simone Weil
• 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
• Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Others argue equality is not even desirable …

• If all things were equally in all men, nothing would be prized.  Thomas Hobbes
• An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects. Martin Luther
• All men are born equal, but some of them outgrow it.  Evan Esar
• I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.  Oliver Wendell Holmes
• It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals. Felix Frankfurter
• No one enjoys being equal.  David Mamet
• People differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Pope Leo XIII
• That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent. Aldous Huxley
• The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice. Friedrich Nietzsche
• The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation’s egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens. Camille Paglia
• The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. Aristotle

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… that status in society should be based on superior merit, ability and hard work

• Merit: The quality of being particularly good or worthy, especially so as to deserve praise or reward. Oxford Dictionary
• Meritocracy: An elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth.  Dictionary.com
• Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow. Elizabeth Gaskell
• When equality is the aim, mediocrity is the result; when excellence is the aim, equality finds its true place.  Dr. Idel Dreimer
• Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Will Durant
• Equality is one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler; a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hard-earned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity.  L. Langstaff

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Some argue that excessive equality pulls everyone down

• The cry of equality pulls everyone down. Iris Murdoch
• 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
• Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom…. The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance. Alexis De Tocqueville  
• Giving out crowns to everyone will not make a nation of kings. Mason Coole Kings

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Some argue equality is the soul of freedom …

• A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.  MILTON FRIEDMAN, Free to Choose
• All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free. Voltaire
• Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril. William Lloyd Garrison
• Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it. Frances Wright
• 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
• What is life without liberty; and what is liberty without equality of rights?  Ernestine L. Rose
• Who can in reason then or right assume monarchy over such as live by right his equals, if in power or splendor less, in freedom equal? John Milton
• Freedom

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… while others argue equality impedes freedom

• It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive. Thomas Mann
• Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.   Will Durant
• Prosperity or egalitarianism — you have to choose. I favor freedom — you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion. Mario Vargas Llosa
• Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. Alexis de Tocqueville
• Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Will Durant
• A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.  Milton Friedman

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Some argue equality is not a law of nature …

• It is not true that equality is a law of nature. Nature has made nothing equal; her sovereign law is subordination and dependence.  Luc de Clapiers
• Nature is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing, the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom. Francis Picabia

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… while others argue this is irrelevant in human society

• Nature’s law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man. Anton Chekhov
• No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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The sun shines equally on all

• As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots. William Makepeace Thackeray
• When the sun rises, it rises for everyone. Aldous Huxley

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We are equal before God …

• Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.  Lord Acton
• Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish. Albert Einstein
• God created the first pair equal in rights, possessions, and authority. He bequeathed the earth to them as a joint inheritance; gave them joint dominion over the irrational creation; but none over each other.  Antoinette L. Brown
• Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all? Samuel Adams
• The Ego is a veil between humans and God.  In prayer all are equal.  Rumi
• God

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… or are we?

• God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements. Rex Stout
• The mind of the thinker and the student is driven to admit, though it be awe-struck by apparent injustice, that this inequality is the work of God. Make all men equal to-day, and God has so created them that they shall be all unequal to-morrow. Anthony Trollope

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Equality requires legislation that supports it

• Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Equality requires equal law

• Equal laws protecting equal rights…the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country. James Madison
• No man is above the law, and no man is below it. Theodore Roosevelt
• The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law. Aristotle
• Equality requires incorporation into the institutions
• Equality means nothing unless incorporated into the institutions. Slobodan Milosevic

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Equality requires organisation

• Equality is the result of human organization. We are not born equal.  Hannah Arendt

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Equality requires economic empowerment

• Equality begins with economic empowerment. George H.W. Bush

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Equality requires a war against poverty

• Equal distribution of wealth does not mean we all should be millionaires — it only means no one should die of hunger.  Dodinsky
• Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.  Khalil Gibran
• Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.  Nelson Mandela
• It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Poverty

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Equality requires equal treatment

• Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons. Aristotle

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Death is the great equaliser

• All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die. Bob Dylan
• As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.  Publilius Syrus
• Death and dice level all distinction.  Samuel Foote
• Equality begins in the grave.  American Proverb
• Equality is the share of everyone at their advent upon earth, and equality is also theirs when placed beneath it. Ninon de L’Enclos
• In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.  John James Ingalls
• Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.  Italian Proverb
• The only place where you can find equality is in the cemetery.  Evan Esar
• The sole equality on earth is death. Philip James Bailey
• When we leave this world, and are laid in the earth, the prince walks as narrow a path as the day-laborer. Miguel de Cervantes
• An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain – the equality of all men. Ignazio Silone
• Death

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Equality is espoused in the American constitution

• Our expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let’s put aside fears of the disuniting of America and warnings of the clash of civilizations. As Langston Hughes sang, Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe. Ronald Takaki
• 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 unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.  G. K. Chesterton
• The word ‘equality’ shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it’s not the American way. Martha Plimpton
• This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened … It ought to to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color.  John F. Kennedy
• 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
• I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit. Theodore Roosevelt
• We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  US Declaration of Independence
• Four score 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

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Equality and religion

• For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor Napoleon Bonaparte
• I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality and fraternity. B. R. Ambedkar
• Religion

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Equality and virtue

• All men are equal: it is not birth, but virtue alone, that makes the difference.  Voltaire
• All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. Thomas Paine
• Virtue

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• Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.  Albert
• Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven.  Yiddish Proverb
• I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. Winston Churchill
• I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.  Mahatma Gandhi
• I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them. Steve Martin

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