Quotes About Equality

In the new style, homosexuals and heterosexuals could be equally unhappy, equally happy, and equally screwed up.

Gay liberation did not create gay promiscuity. There was sex before there were marches, politics, or books – it was the best reason for being homosexual, it and love.

gap between rich and poor was not just one of wealth but of accountability

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.

It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.

Nihil humanum a me alienum puto, said the Roman poet Terence: 'Nothing human is alien to me.' The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.

You can't have occupation and human rights.

The only known cure for poverty is emancipation of women

If anyone's interested in the alleviation of poverty... the only thing we know definitely works is giving women control over their own reproduction

The holy book in the longest continuous use—the Talmud—commands the observant one to thank his maker every day that he was not born a woman.

It is odd, when you think about it, that we accuse racists of "discrimination." This is the very thing of which they are by definition incapable: They think all members of certain groups are the same.

Once again it is demonstrated that people do not love their chains or their jailers,-and that the aspiration for a civilized life - that universal eligibility to be noble, as Saul Bellow's Augie March so imperishably phrases it - is proper and common to all.

You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

Jefferson writes dismissively of slaves that "their griefs are transient." American white supremacists to this day maintain that blacks are "mud people" because their lack of conscience prevents them from blushing—they are not capable of summoning "blood in the face," as the

The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.

I am always and at once on the defensive, for example, when people speak of races and nations as if they were personalities and had souls and destinies and such like.

The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.)

A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary.

Now, for example, people with freckles aren't thought of as a minority by the non-freckled. They aren't a minority in the sense we're talking about. And why aren't they? Because a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.

All right, we've heard your liberty speech. Does that include us or doesn't it?

A minority is only thought of a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary.

Everyone is happier if they have someone else to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both.

Justice favors the favored sons.

Who is it who decides that one man should live and another should die? My life wasn't worth any more than his, but he's the one who's buried, while I get to enjoy at least a few more hours above the ground. Is it chance, random and cruel, or is there some purpose or pattern to all this, even if it lies beyond our ken?