“Equality loses meaning when it is reduced to rhetoric. It must translate into access, opportunity, and protection in real terms. A state that proclaims equality but tolerates systemic exclusion betrays its own ideals.”

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.

Writing for the court, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
1950s

Part 3
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 63 Cited in: Lars Skyttner (2005) General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice. p. 103

Address to the United Nations (1963)
Context: When we talk of the equality of man, we find, also, a challenge and an opportunity; a challenge to breathe new life into the ideals enshrined in the Charter, an opportunity to bring men closer to freedom and true equality. and thus, closer to a love of peace.
The goal of the equality of man which we seek is the antithesis of the exploitation of one people by another with which the pages of history and in particular those written of the African and Asian continents, speak at such length.
Exploitation, thus viewed, has many faces. But whatever guise it assumes, this evil is to be shunned where it does not exist and crushed where it does.

Writing for the court, United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996)

As quoted by Thomas Little Heath, Diophantos of Alexandria: https://books.google.com/books?id=ABkPAAAAIAAJ A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (1885) <br class="br">Arithmetica (c. 250 AD)

Speech in the House of Commons (24 November 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103146 <br class="br">Leader of the Opposition <br class="br">Context: The word “equality” is often used, but, wisely, rarely defined. The moment one tries to define it, one gets into great difficulty. For example, it cannot mean equality of incomes or earnings; otherwise, we would not need more than one union. Indeed, we would not need one union. If we are to have opportunity, we cannot have equality, because the two are opposite. We may have equality of opportunity, but if the only opportunity is to be equal, it is not opportunity.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 344.