1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and brotherhood. It is not possible, with the imperfections of mankind, ever wholly to achieve such an ideal, if only for the reason that the shortcomings of men are such that complete and unrestricted individual liberty would mean the negation of even approximate equality, while a rigid and absolute equality would imply the destruction of every shred of liberty. Our business is to secure a practical working combination between the two. This combination should aim, on the one hand to secure to each man the largest measure of individual liberty that is compatible with his fellows getting from life a just share of the good things to which they are legitimately entitled; while, on the other hand, it should aim to bring about among well-behaved, hardworking people a measure of equality which shall be substantial, and which shall yet permit to the individual the personal liberty of achievement and reward without which life would not be worth living, without which all progress would stop, and civilization first stagnate and then go backwards. Such a combination cannot be completely realized. It can be realized at all only by the application of the spirit of fraternity, the spirit of brotherhood. This spirit demands that each man shall learn and apply the principle that his liberty must be used not only for his own benefit but for the interest of the community as a whole, while the community in its turn, acting as a whole, shall understand that while it must insist on its own rights as against the individual, it must also scrupulously safeguard these same rights of the individual.
Mitchell Baker (1959) Chairwoman; former CEO
cnet.com: "Mozilla CEO Eich resigns after gay-marriage controversy" 3 Apr 2014 http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-eich-resigns-after-controversy/; on the resignation of Brendan Eich, 3 April 2014:
George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer
From Hearing Before the Committee on Interstate Commerce: United States Senate Sixty-second Congress pursuant to S. Res. 98 &c. (6 December 1911:803)
Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba
Speech (22 December 1991) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1991/esp/f221291e.html
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IV, "Laissez - Faire", p. 50.
Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 15
Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist
In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation (1893)
Context: Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal. And unless there is equality (and by equality I mean equal chances for every one to make the most of himself) unless, I say, these equal chances exist, freedom, either of thought, speech, or action, is equally a mockery.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet
Undated entry of December 1863 or early 1864, as translated by Humphry Ward (1893), p. 215
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2013, Cape Town University Address (June 2013)
Context: We always have the opportunity to choose our better history. We can always understand that most important decision -- the decision we make when we find our common humanity in one another. That’s always available to us, that choice. [... ] it can be heard in the confident voices of young people like you. It is that spirit, that innate longing for justice and equality, for freedom and solidarity -- that’s the spirit that can light the way forward. It's in you.
Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer
From Created Equal, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 5 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/broadcasts/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=5. <br class="br">Variant: The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.
