Equality Quotes


The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
– Will Rogers
His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants hall.
– James M. Barrie
In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.
– Harry A. Blackmun
Canada is the homeland of equality, justice and tolerance.
– Kim Campbell
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
The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.
– Arthur Hugh Clough
A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
– Andrea Dworkin
All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.
– Bob Dylan
People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.
– Linda Ellerbee
The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
– Anatole France
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
– Erich Fromm
The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.
– Charles Fourier
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
– Mahatma Gandhi
As a result of America's efforts to realize the ideals of equality and freedom, blacks in America are now the freest and richest black people anywhere on the face of the earth including all of the nations that are ruled by blacks.
– David Horowitz
The goal of the EU is to form a region of freedom, security and justice. Freedom in this connection cannot be just the freedom of the strong, but it must be combined with fraternity and equality.
– Tarja Halonen
We are a model country where gender equality is concerned.
– Tarja Halonen
I believe I've always been a big believer in equality. No one has ever been able to tell me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.
– Anne Hathaway
Republicans many times can't get the words 'equality of opportunity' out of their mouths. Their lips do not form that way.
– Jack Kemp
If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.
– Robert Francis Kennedy
Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking?
– Krzysztof Kieslowski
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.
All the people like us are we, and everyone else is They.
– Rudyard Kipling
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
– Irving Kristol
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
In Canada, women's rights are a vital part of our effort to build a society of real equality - not just for some, but for all Canadians. A society in which women no longer encounter discrimination nor are shut out from opportunities open to others.
– Paul Martin
The people of Canada have worked hard to build a country that opens its doors to include all, regardless of their differences; a country that respects all, regardless of their differences; a country that demands equality for all, regardless of their differences.
– Paul Martin
Equality means nothing unless incorporated into the institutions.
– Slobodan Milosevic
Yugoslavia is a multinational community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it.
– Slobodan Milosevic
The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
– Iris Murdoch
On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.
– Eleanor Holmes Norton
The equality that we are all entitled to, as citizens of this democracy, can't be avoided by some religious dogma of a President who's is supposed to believe in the notion of separation of church and state. And he frankly doesn't.
– Rosie O'Donnell
No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.
– George Orwell
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.
– Thomas Paine
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
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor the greatest champion of racial equality who taught a nation - through compassion and courage - about democracy, nonviolence and racial justice.
– Mark Pryor
I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.
– John Randolph
Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.
– Maximilien Robespierre
I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.
– Maureen Reagan
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
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
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 year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.
– Kurt Vonnegut
Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
– Simone Weil
The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: 'It's a girl.'
– Shirley Chisholm
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.
You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.
– Bono
You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.
– Arthur Ashe
You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.
– Muhammad Ali Jinnah
You got to fight for quality art and equality and all the things that we're fighting for, the things we believe in. Choice and preference and all those things that we support. We don't want to give up that fight. You got to keep doing it.
– Christopher Cross
Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.
– Toni Morrison
Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Women have talent and intelligence but, due to social constraints and prejudices, it is still a long distance away from the goal of gender equality.
– Pratibha Patil
Women have a lot to say about how to advance women's rights, and governments need to learn from that, listen to the movement and respond.
– Charlotte Bunch
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
– Erica Jong
With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I'm going to press on for equality. I'm going to press on for the sake of our children. I'm going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I am going to press on.
– Barack Obama
Where terrorists offer injustice, disorder and destruction, the United States and its allies stand for freedom, fairness, equality, hope, and opportunity.
– John O. Brennan
When I look at my daughter, who's 24, she is much more confident than I ever was and her expectations are higher. But I worry that there is a backlash brewing against progress on equality.
– Frances O'Grady
What's really sad is that so many young women between the ages of 16 and 25 are ignorant and they already believe that women get the same pay as men. They don't even really understand that equality hasn't happened with the pay force.
– Bell Hooks
Well, my view before was a Western view, and I certainly understand marriage equality and civil rights, equal rights for all, but having visited developing nations and some of the poorest nations in the world, I realize how deep it goes and how much work really needs to be done to create equality for all.
– Jason Mraz
Well, my personal mission statement is that we want marriage equality in all 50 states. We want it not to be a state-by-state issue. We don't want it to be something the majority is voting on. I don't think the civil rights of any minority should be in the hands of any majority.
– Jesse Tyler Ferguson
We will have bigger bureaucracies, bigger labor unions, and bigger state-run corporations. It will be harder to be an entrepreneur because of punitive taxes and regulations. The rewards of success will be expropriated for the sake of attaining greater income equality.
– Arthur C. Brooks
We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.
– Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
We live in a world where equality is pretty important.
– John Key
We have to restore power to the family, to the neighborhood, and the community with a non-market principle, a principle of equality, of charity, of let's-take-care-of-one-another. That's the creative challenge.
– Jerry Brown
We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.
– Ferdinand Mount
Virtue can only flourish among equals.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Until women learn to want economic independence, and until they work out a way to get this independence without denying themselves the joys of love and motherhood, it seems to me feminism has no roots.
– Crystal Eastman
Unless there is recognition that women are most vulnerable... and you do something about social and cultural equality for women, you're never going to defeat this pandemic.
– Stephen Lewis
U.N. Women was created due to the acknowledgement that gender equality and women's empowerment was still, despite progress, far from what it should be. Transforming political will and decisions, such as the Member States creating U.N. Women, into concrete steps towards gender equality and women's empowerment, I think is one of the main challenges.
– Michelle Bachelet
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
To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.
– Golda Meir
Think of submitting our measure to the advice of politicians! I would as soon submit the subject of the equality of a goose to a fox.
– Anna Howard Shaw
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.
– Abraham Lincoln
There's a remarkable amount of sexism on TV. When male characters are flawed, they're interesting, deep and complex. But when female characters are flawed, they're just a mess. It's good to put more flawed but interesting female characters out there because it promotes equality.
– Ellen Pompeo
There needs to be radical development in equality law to create the environment to allow women to stay in work.
– Ken Livingstone
There are a lot of things that fit on a bumper sticker in terms of either liberty or equality or progress that when made more concrete just don't pan out.
– Laurence Tribe
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
– Plato
The work that must be done for each woman to reconnect with her psyche and to give herself a chance to live her own life is essentially the same. The realization of the equality of all races, the equality of all beings is essential.
– Betty Buckley
The word 'equality' shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it's not the American way.
– Martha Plimpton
The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.
– Andrew Jackson
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
The unionists also for their part, want to minimise the potential for change, not only on the equality agenda but on the issues of sovereignty and ending the union.
– Gerry Adams
The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The rights of one sex, political and otherwise, are the same as those of the other sex, and this equality of rights ought to be fully recognized.
– Leland Stanford
The right to a quality education is, I believe, the perfect path to bridge the gap between different cultures and to reconcile various civilizations. Without such a right, the values of liberty, justice and equality will have no meaning. Ignorance is by far the biggest danger and threat to humankind.
– Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned
The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.
– Robert Bork
The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.'
– Paul Ryan
The only way to ensure equality for women is to clearly declare it in our Constitution.
– Carolyn Maloney
The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale.
– Johanna Siguroardottir
The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality.
– Evo Morales
The more equality women have, the fairer, more civilized and tolerant society will be. Sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength.
– Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
The media says that equality for women has arrived, but if you look around, you still don't see girls playing guitars and having success with it.
– Joan Jett
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 mandate I have received and for which I will speak with heart and head to implement over the next seven years had its four pillars - an inclusive citizenship, equality and participation and respect in a creative society creating an excellence in everything we Irish do.
– Michael D. Higgins
The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.
– Robert Reich
The land is ours. It's not European and we have taken it, we have given it to the rightful people... Those of white extraction who happen to be in the country and are farming are welcome to do so, but they must do so on the basis of equality.
– Robert Mugabe
The Klan had used fear, intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over African-Americans who sought justice and equality and it sought to respond to the young workers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the same way.
– Charles Rangel
The Internet is the hope of an integrated world without frontiers, a common world without controlling owners, a world of opportunities and equality. This is a utopia that we have been dreaming about and is a world in which each and every one of us are protagonists of a destiny that we have in our hands.
– Laura Chinchilla
The equality among all members of the League, which is provided in the statutes giving each state only one vote, cannot of course abolish the actual material inequality of the powers concerned.
– Hjalmar Branting