Quotes About Equality

the system glorified by John of Salisbury and John Fortescue, was unjust in a thousand all too obvious ways, but it offered those on the lowest rungs one notable freedom: the freedom not to have to take the achievements of quite so many people in society as reference points—and so find themselves severely wanting in status and importance as a result.

Our judgement of what constitutes an appropriate limit on anything—for example, on wealth or esteem—is never arrived at independently; instead, we make such determinations by comparing our condition with that of a reference group, a set of people who we believe resemble us.

Uniting the many challenges to the commercial meritocratic ideal is a threefold plea, that we cease investing with moral connotations something as apparently haphazardly distributed as money; that we sever the doctrinaire connections routinely made between wealth and virtue; and that before we begin measuring our peers, we at least attempt to ensure that the taller ones have taken off their stilts, and that the shorter ones are not standing in a ditch.

We might do better, instead, to distance ourselves, both practically and emotionally, from those whom we consider to be our equals and yet who have grown richer than us.

The distinctive mark of snobs is not simple discrimination, it is an insistence on a flawless equation between social rank and human worth.

classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination.

I would have thought, said the prime minister, that Your Majesty was above literature. Above literature? said the Queen. Who is above literature? You might as well say one is above humanity.

Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out.

Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Good-looking people marry good-looking people and the others take what's left.

In fact she knew perfectly well (Norman again), but to her everybody's name was immaterial, as indeed was everything else, their clothes, their voice, their class. She was a genuine democrat, perhaps the only one in the country.

When dead she would exist only in the memories of people. She, who had never been subject to anyone would now be on the par with everybody else. Reading could not change that. Though writing might.

Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

Books did not defer. All readers were equal and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.

L'attrattiva della letteratura, rifletté, consisteva nella sua indifferenza, nella sua totale mancanza di deferenza. I libri se ne infischiavano di chi li leggeva; se nessuno li apriva, loro stavano bene lo stesso. Un lettore valeva l'altro e lei non faceva eccezione.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference; there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers are equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. . . [reading] was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised. (from The Uncommon Reader, pg 30-31)

Still Mrs. ransom felt [remarking on daytime talk shows], they were all better than she was. For what none of these. whooping, giggling (and often quite obese) creatures seemed in no doubt about was that at the basic level at which these programs were pitched people were all the same. There was no shame and no reserve and to pretend otherwise was to be stuck up and a hypocrite.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something lofty about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

No one can dispute that. He was a good man, a kind man. "But you know, so was my husband Keo. So were hundreds of other men who lived and died here. Yet sometimes it seems the world is more moved by the death of one white priest than by the passing of hundreds, thousands, of Hawaiians. Everyone knows Damien's name now, but will anyone remember these girls, other than you and me?

Grace would be a poor host indeed to exclude anyone.

Man and thranx had been so close for so long that they were no longer thought of as aliens. More like short people in shiny suits.

Bigotry against any group should be disqualifying for high office.

Aspirations don't disappoint, so long as you realize that the struggle for liberty, justice and anything else worth pursuing never stays won.

That's what libraries were for: to make sure that everybody had the same access to the same books everyone else did.