"We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these,
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and
to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles,
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their safety and happiness."
- US Declaration
of Independence as originally written by Thomas Jefferson, 1776.
"I define Equality of
Opportunity as the following : Equality before the Law.
It is a career open
to the talents. No arbitary obstacles should prevent people from achieving
those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values
lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, colour, religion, sex, nor any
other irrelevent characteristic should determine the opportunitiues that
are open to a person - only his abilities.
Equality of opportunity,
like personal equality, is not inconsistent with liberty, on the contrary,
it is an essential component of liberty. If some people are denied access
to particular positions in life for which they are qualified simply because
of their ethnic background, colour, or religion, that is an interference
with their right to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
- Milton Friedman,
"Free To Choose"
"The authors are badly
confused about equality. They are hung up on the term 'equality of opportunity.'
Jefferson's 'equality' in the Declaration is, of course, what Hayek called
isonomia - equality before the law. Philosopher Robert Nozick called it
process equality, which he carefully distinguished from end-state-equality.
The authors pursue the latter of those mutually exclusive concepts."
- Charles W. Baird,
review of "The Stakeholder Society"
The struggle for the high
school and the debate over its proper role in American democracy would
focus once again a question that had recurred throughout American history
and that would bedevil the nation in the 20th century. It was in some ways
the central problem of modern democracy, for it was nothing less than the
meaning of human "equality". Was the good society one which allowed all
citizens to develop their natural differences, including their natural
inequalities? Or was it a society which tried to make men equal? Did "equality"
mean the maximum fulfillment of each, or did it mean the levelling of all?
This question was nowhere more sharply posed than in education, and especially
in the high school.
- Daniel Boorstin, "The Americans: The Democratic Experience"
All men are by nature...
born equally free and independent... not a physical but a moral equality.
Common sense was sufficient to determine that it could not mean that all
men were equal in fact, but in right, not equally tall, strong, wise, handsome,
active, but equally men... the work of the same Artist, children in the
same cases entitled to the same justice.
- John Adams
'All men are created
equal' says the American Declaration of Independence.
'All men shall be
kept equal' say the Socialists.
- Winston Churchill
Let our children grow
tall, and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.
Let a thousand flowers
bloom, and if some are prettier than others, so be it.
- Robert Locke
We have so many people
who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the
conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin
- Ronald Reagan
You do not make the
weak strong by making the strong weak.
It is the character of
egalitarian measures that they pull down what is above. They never raise
what is below. Beware dependency on the state.
- Edmund Burke, 1770.
Those who attempt to
level, never equalize... Very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements,
have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.
- Edmund Burke
Socialists make the
mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot
allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless.
- Kenneth Baker
Even if it were proved
- which it is not - that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain
power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members
of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and
it would be irrelevent to one's judgment of him. A genius is still a genius,
regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race.
Democracy extends the
sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches
all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent,
a mere number. 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
A society that puts equality
- in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with
neither equality or freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will
destroy freedom. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will,
as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality.
Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity
for today's less well off to become tomorrow's rich, and in the process,
enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a richer and fuller
- Milton Friedman,
"Free To Choose"
The urge to distribute
wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about
by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It
is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable
society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a
source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy.
- Paul Johnson
There exists in the
human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt
to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality
in slavery to inequality with freedom.
- Alexis de Tocqueville
Everything that I have
experienced and everything that I have read about socialist experiments
in the field of equality convinces me that, not only is equality of outcome
an evil myth, but that all attempts to engineer it, that is, to rig the
race, are certain to end where they have ended from the French to the Russian
revolutions: the guillotine and the gallows. Hierarchy is vital to any
human project. In a storm, no mass meeting is a substitute for a captain
on deck to shoulder responsibility.
- Eoghan Harris, "The Irish Independent"
Socialism was always
a crappy philosophy based on the stupid idea that we couldn't allow anybody
to succeed in life becacause if would make the rest of us feel like failures.
Good riddance to that.
- Marc Coleman, urging a new approach for the left in "The Irish Independent"
My experience of life
tells me that equality is a hopeless cause. From the minute you are born,
you are unequal to others born on that same day and in the same location,
and there is nothing any state directive can do about it. You may be born
plain-looking. This is one of the greatest disadvantages in life. To be
born handsome is to have a first-class ticket on the journey of life. You
may be born to two rather stout parents, in which case you have an inherited
genotype which will make you fat however many diets your torment yourself
Like the ideal of
chastity, the ideal of equality is a war against nature, and in wars against
nature, nature usually wins. Philosophers say that Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
- that trio of aspirations still stamped on official French documents -
are contradictions in terms. You can never have both liberty and equality:
you have to choose. I'll take liberty.
- Mary Kenny, "No Such Thing As Equality", "The Irish Independent"
Equality has always
been a threat to liberty, since you can never have both. One person's "equality"
is another person's lack of choice. The state which enforces "equality"
will trample on liberty. The nation which embraces "liberty" will always
be an unequal one, since free individuals will make different and thereby
- Mary Kenny, "The Irish Independent"
It is a terrible misunderstanding
of meritocracy to assume it means everyone is somehow (or could be) of
equal merit, with equal success. Innate ability varies, obviously enough.
Merit varies. All cannot have prizes, though all can do well in some way.
No one believes these days that anyone should be held back by some long-discredited
idea of knowing your place or getting above your station. We do live in
a meritocracy, imperfect though it is, and few people would wish to change
that. However, the painful truth is that meritocracy is cruel. It offers
no excuses to those who donít do well. It is even more cruel when teachers
and politicians offer false encouragement based on a confusion of meritocracy
with socialism. Socialism is incompatible with meritocracy.
- Minette Marrin, "The Lies They Tell Children", "The Times"
If a man does not keep
pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau,
Somebody had said, that
a king may make a nobleman, but he cannot make a gentleman.
God may have made men
and women, but Colt made them equal.
There is no principle
in the conservative philosophy than that of the inherent and absolute incompatibility
between liberty and equality.
- Robert A. Nisbet,
"Twilight of Authority"
EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW
The great aim of the
struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.
The only stable state
is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
- Aristotle, "Politics
V", c.322 BC
"The most certain test
by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security
enjoyed by minorities."
It is of the essence of
the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike
in spite of the fact that they are different.
- Friedrich Hayek,
"The Constitution of Liberty", 1960.
From the fact that people
are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result
must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place
them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality
before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but
are in conflict which each other; and we can achieve either one or the
other, but not both at the same time.
- Friedrich Hayek
If a test of
civilisation be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half
of society over which the other half has power.
- Harriet Martineau,
Society in America
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