Quotes About Equality

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

You can't make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak

You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence built.

no man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control, yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own, better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right, not even killing the dog, will cure the bite

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.

If my father's son can become President of these United States, then your father's son can become anything he wishes.

They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right; so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

We must remember that the people of all the States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several States. We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say nothing insulting or irritating. I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like the Pharisees set ourselves up to be better than other people.

I do not wish you to believe that I assume to be any better than others who have gone before me.

Fourscore and seven years ago...

Aqueles que negam liberdade aos outros não merecem para si mesmos.

Both [North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Peu importe ce que vous êtes. Soyez bons.

Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior... Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.

God must have loved the plain people; He made so many of them.

When you have succeeded in dehumanizing the Negro, when you have put him down, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you