Quotes About Equality

We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It's never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?

Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculating" and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.

We are projects of collective self-creation. What if we approached human history that way? What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures who deserve to be understood as such? What if, instead of telling a story about how our species fell from some idyllic state of equality, we ask how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles that we can no longer even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves?

Vorrei che tu potessi ricordare come ci si sente quando si è donna, e come ci si sente quando non si è né uomo né donna. Solo "essere", prima di tutto, prima delle definizioni, dei pronomi personali, delle parole e dei generi. Forse, in questo modo, potresti anche arrivare, quasi per caso, alla possibilità primordiale di essere me

Of all the English-speaking people in the seventeenth century, the Quakers moved farthest toward the idea of equality between the sexes.

The job of the union, he insisted, could be reduced to a simple idea: the protection of the slowest and least efficient worker.

If slavery was justified on the ground that masters were white while slaves were black, Lincoln warned, "By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own." If it was defended on the ground that masters were intellectually the superiors of blacks, the same logic applied: "By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own." The

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.

Black skin privilege guarantees not only exemptions from intellectual and political standards that others are required to meet but from moral standards as well.

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

This attitude of judging each other by our "jobs" is to ignore and deny who we really are.

Success should be judged on how few people are homeless, not by how much more it costs every year to buy a house.

the Rommel diary records an edict that was typical of him: "While the overflowing POW cage on the airfield is being set up, South African officers demand to be segregated from the blacks. This request is turned down by the C in C. He points out that the blacks are South African soldiers too—they wear the same uniform and they have fought side by side with the whites. They are to be housed in the same POW cage.

The real goal, however, was not to defeat the white man, but "to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority.… The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community" where all men would treat each other as brothers and equals. "There are great resources of goodwill in the southern white man that we must somehow tap,

Mass action by everyday black people was just as powerful a tool for social change as the lawsuit, and maybe more so. If

We must understand," Rustin wrote, "that our refusal to accept jim crow in specific areas challenges the entire social, political and economic order that has kept us second class citizens.… Those who oppose us, understand this.

The time had come, King said, to "move from protest to reconciliation.

King told the student leaders not to forget that the struggle was justice versus injustice, not black versus white, and reminded them always to be open to compromise with local whites.

Tell Montgomery they can keep shooting and I'm going to stand up to them; tell Montgomery they can keep bombing and I'm going to stand up to them. If I had to die tomorrow morning I would die happy because I've been to the mountaintop and I've seen the promised land and it's going to be here in Montgomery.

the Negro must come to the point of refusing to cooperate with evil," but without ever hating the evildoers. "I have no malice toward anyone, not even the white policeman who almost broke my arm, who choked and kicked me. Let there be no malice among you.

As a prominent African American, Chicago-based theologian who worshiped in the same church later emphasized, above all else, including color, complexion, and race, first and foremost Barack "Obama is Hawaiian.

Gay liberation was not part of the Comparative Politics course, but Goldyn drew "a good-sized crowd" one evening during that term when he spoke on gay activism, and a column he wrote for the student newspaper ended by declaring that "the point of liberation, sexual or otherwise, is to rewrite the rules." Goldyn made a huge impact on Barry Obama.

failure to respect the dignity and worth of all human personality.