“Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.”

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" from a memoir, published (1817).

Remarks by President Obama and President Kenyatta of Kenya in a Press Conference at Kenyan State House in Nairobi, Kenya https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-and-president-kenyatta-kenya-press-conference (July 25, 2015)
2015
Context: I believe in the principle of treating people equally under the law, and that they are deserving of equal protection under the law and that the state should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation. And I say that, recognizing that there may be people who have different religious or cultural beliefs. But the issue is how does the state operate relative to people. If you look at the history of countries around the world, when you start treating people differently -- not because of any harm they’re doing anybody, but because they’re different -- that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode and bad things happen. And when a government gets in the habit of treating people differently, those habits can spread. And as an African-American in the United States, I am painfully aware of the history of what happens when people are treated differently, under the law, and there were all sorts of rationalizations that were provided by the power structure for decades in the United States for segregation and Jim Crow and slavery, and they were wrong.

pg 9.
Science in a Free Society (1978)
Context: A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because the importance the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.

2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)

To Union soldiers (1865), as quoted in Andrew Johnson: A Profile http://web.archive.org/web/20110316175449/http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps17.htm (1969), "Johnson and the Negro", by Lawanda Cox and John H. Cox; edited by Eric L. McKitrick, Hill & Wang, New York pp. 141.
Quote

Dune Genesis (1980)
Context: In the beginning I was just as ready as anyone to fall into step, to seek out the guilty and to punish the sinners, even to become a leader. Nothing, I felt, would give me more gratification than riding the steed of yellow journalism into crusade, doing the book that would right the old wrongs.
Reevaluation raised haunting questions. I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability.

A chi in amor s'invecchia, oltr'ogni pena,
Si convengono i ceppi e la catena.
Canto XXIV, stanza 2 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

as quoted by Dr. Javed Laghari in Monograph titled "Leaders of Pakistan" published by SZABIST, Pages 2-10 ( Vol.1 June-2009 http://www.szabist.edu.pk/Publications/Books/LeadershipBK-CP-09.pdf/). Retrieved on July 21, 2016