Quotes about equality (3433 quotes, page 12)

“No operation of addition or subtraction gives rise to diversity, but all are equally related to their pair of Terms, or Elements.”

Johannes Kepler book Harmonices Mundi

Book I, sect. XX, as translated by Aiton, Duncan and Field, American Philosophical Society (1997), p 25.
Harmonices Mundi (1618)

“But passing by all other considerations, and contemplating merely the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government; that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism.”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

A Defence of the Use of the Bible in Schools American Tract Society, 1820. http://www.biblebelievers.com/Bible_in_schools.html

Money , Pain , Books , Youth

“It would be frightening to think that in all the cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one's destiny lacks meaning.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Attributed in The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom (2011) edited by Diana Doroftei and Matthew Cross.

Life , Thinking

“One hundred years after the Declaration that 'all men are created equal,' there began to gather in Newport a colony of the rich, determined to show that some Americans were conspicuously more equal than others.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

Alistair Cooke's America (1973)

Men

“The author of the oldest extant Sanskrit grammar was Panini, a native of extreme north-west India, … His work consists of nearly 4000 aphorisms, each of which owing to the extreme conciseness of the style, generally consists of not more than two or three words. Hence, the whole grammar could be printed within the compass of about thirty-five octavo pages. Yet it describes the entire Sanskrit language with a completeness which has never been equalled elsewhere. Thus it is at once the shortest and the fullest grammar in the world.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Gazetteer in: Sanskrit literature http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gazetteer/pager.html?objectid=DS405.1.I34_V02_298.gif,The Digital South Asia Library - University of Chicago (dsal.uchicago.edu)

World

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high… That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit… However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction… I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation. There is certainly no virtue in taxation for its own sake… We have been building up, not dissipating, overseas assets. The question is whether, while so doing, we have been neglecting our investment at home and particularly that in the public services. There is no doubt, in my mind at any rate, about the ability of a low taxation market-oriented economy to produce consumer goods, even if an awful lot of them are imported, far better than any planned economy that ever was or probably ever can be invented. However, I am not convinced that such a society and economy, particularly if it is not infused with the civic optimism which was in many ways the true epitome of Victorian values, is equally good at protecting the environment or safeguarding health, schools, universities or Britain's scientific future. And if we are asked which is under greater threat in Britain today—the supply of consumer goods or the nexus of civilised public services—it would be difficult not to answer that it was the latter.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988).

Wisdom , People , Health , School

“… a rather different class of applications of the idea of best allocation of scarce resources… usually referred to as the theory of optimal economic growth. In most studies of this kind made in the countries with market economies there is not an identifiable client to whom the findings are submitted as policy recommendations. Nor is there an obvious choice of objective function, such as cost minimization or profit maximization in the studies addressed to individual enterprises. The field has more of a speculative character. The models studied usually contain only a few highly aggregated variables. One considers alternative objective functions that incorporate or emphasize various strands of ethical, political, or social thought. These objectives are then tried out to see what future paths of the economy they imply under equally simplified assumptions of technology or resource availability.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses, 1975, p. 244

Idea , Optimism , Study , Future

“If racial minorities, sexual minorities, feminists both male and female, hell, all liberals got together and had this big "too much information," "go there," voice…that would equal power. And that power would equal change. And that change would equal a revolution.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Hell , Change

“Equality of treatment is the chief purpose for which the Government exists … Liberty is but an equality of justice.”

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)

Justice

“As it is the essence of justice ultimately to shape those relations in the sense of equality, so it is essential to the legal precept in its meaning to be directed toward equality, to claim to be susceptible of generalization or to be general in character.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

Rechtsphilosophie (1932)

Justice , Sense

“Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Youth , Age

“.. I will endeavour to make clear to men of good will what the word 'material' means with regard to painting and that, without the material substance of paint, a painting is not a work of art but merely a decorative object, or rather, if it deals with an invented painting, the value of the image resides in its spiritual content.
In order to be a work of art, a painting must be very well painted and the good quality of the paint depends completely on the material substance of the paint with which it is executed. This matter, which constitutes the substance of painting, is composed of two elements which are equally important and absolutely inseparable: physical substance and metaphysical substance. These two elements complete each other reciprocally and when they are of a superior quality, create a masterpiece by way of their absolute harmony.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Cirico's text 'A DISCOURSE ON THE MATERIAL SUBSTANCE OF PAINT', 1942 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/541-547Metafisica5_6.pdf, p. 542
1920s and later

Men , Art , Way , Painting

“We have repeatedly observed that while any whole is evolving, there is always going on an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself; but we have not observed that this equally holds of the totality of things, which is made up of parts within parts from the greatest down to the smallest.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Pt. II, The Knowable; Ch. XIV, Summary and Conclusion
First Principles (1862)

Parting

“You talk for talking’s sake,' she hissed. I asked if that was bad. 'I mean it,' the girl replied. 'You talk for talking’s sake.' I had heard her the first time and had understood the words but not the contempt with which they were charged. 'Would you be equally annoyed,' I asked, 'if I danced for dancing’s sake? […] I should have said, 'Would you hate me if I lived for living’s sake?' This would have been the total question — the one to which a full reply could have saved the world.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

How to Have a Life-Style

Hate , World , Girl , Question

“I do not believe that my brother Tariq accused me of this, and you will not drag me into talking about him or responding [to this claim]. [That said, ] I do have close strategic ties with American organizations involved in protecting human rights, with American ambassadors and with officials in the U. S. State Department. [I also have ties with activists in] most of the E. U. and Arab countries. But they are ties among equals; [I am not] their subordinate.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman – A Profile (2011)

Country

“Who is, in the classical conception, the subject that comprehends the ontological condition of truth and untruth? It is the master of pure contemplation (theoria), and the master of a practice guided by theoria, i. e., the philosopher-statesman. To be sure, the truth which he knows and expounds is potentially accessible to everyone. Led by the philosopher, the slave in Plato’s Meno is capable of grasping the truth of a geometrical axiom, i. e., a truth beyond change and corruption. But since truth is a state of Being as well as of thought, and since the latter is the expression and manifestation of the former, access to truth remains mere potentiality as long as it is not living in and with the truth. And this mode of existence is closed to the slave — and to anyone who has to spend his life procuring the necessities of life. Consequently, if men no longer had to spend their lives in the realm of necessity, truth and a true human existence would be in a strict and real sense universal. Philosophy envisages the equality of man but, at the same time, it submits to the factual denial of equality. For in the given reality, procurement of the necessities is the life-long job of the majority, and the necessities have to be procured and served so that truth (which is freedom from material necessities) can be. Here, the historical barrier arrests and distorts the quest for truth; the societal division of labor obtains the dignity of an ontological condition. If truth presupposes freedom from toil, and if this freedom is, in the social reality, the prerogative of a minority, then the reality allows such a truth only in approximation and for a privileged group. This state of affairs contradicts the universal character of truth, which defines and “prescribes” not only a theoretical goal, but the best life of man qua man, with respect to the essence of man. For philosophy, the contradiction is insoluble, or else it does not appear as a contradiction because it is the structure of the slave or serf society which this philosophy does not transcend. Thus it leaves history behind, unmastered, and elevates truth safely above the historical reality. There, truth is reserved intact, not as an achievement of heaven or in heaven, but as an achievement of thought — intact because its very notion expresses the insight that those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 128-130

Life , Men , Truth , History

“There is a well known and most profound saying of people wishing to induce sympathy in each other. 'Put yourself in his place,' they say. But it is easy only to put yourself in the place of your equals. At a certain point of inferiority, real or imaginary, this substitution is no longer possible…. Young Vittorio Mussolini has published a book on his Ethiopian campaign, of which I quote this extract: It was thrilling. A huge zariba, surrounded by tall trees, was very difficult to hit. I had to aim very carefully, and I only succeeded the third time. The poor devils inside jumped out when they saw their roof was on fire, and fled madly…surrounded by a ring of flames, four to five thousand Abyssinians died of suffocation. It was like hell itself. Smoke rising up to unbelievable heights, and flames turning the black sky red. Obviously Signor Vittorio Mussolini never dreamt of putting himself in the place of the Ethiopians!”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.222-223

People , Books , Quotes , Hell

“…Stevens does not think of inspiration (or whatever you want to call it) as a condition of composition. He too is waiting for the spark from heaven to fall—poets have no choice about this—but he waits writing; and this—other things being equal, when it’s possible, if it’s possible—is the best way for a poet to wait.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 66
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Way , Thinking , Waiting

“No more important development has taken place in the last year than the beginning of a restoration of agriculture to a prosperous condition. We must permit no division of classes in this country, with one occupation striving to secure advantage over another. Each must proceed under open opportunities and with a fair prospect of economic equality. The Government can not successfully insure prosperity or fix prices by legislative fiat. Every business has its risk and its times of depression. It is well known that in the long run there will be a more even prosperity and a more satisfactory range of prices under the natural working out of economic laws than when the Government undertakes the artificial support of markets and industries. Still we can so order our affairs, so protect our own people from foreign competition, so arrange our national finances, so administer our monetary system, so provide for the extension of credits, so improve methods of distribution, as to provide a better working machinery for the transaction of the business of the Nation with the least possible friction and loss. The Government has been constantly increasing its efforts in these directions for the relief and permanent establishment of agriculture on a sound and equal basis with other business.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

People , Law , Business , Support

“Socrates compared living without thinking systematically to practicing an activity like pottery or shoemaking without following or even knowing of technical procedures. One would never imagine that a good pot or shoe would result from intuition alone; why then assume that the more complex task of directing one’s life could be undertaken without any sustained reflection on premises or goals? Perhaps because we don’t believe that directing our lives is in fact complicated. Certain difficult activities look very difficult from the outside, while other equally difficult activities look very easy. Arriving at sound views on how to live falls into the second category, making a pot or a shoe into the first.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), p. 21.

Life , Shoe , Imagination , Thinking

“There is another side to chivalry. If it dispenses leniency, it may with equal justification invoke control.”

Freda Adler (1934) Criminologist, educator

Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 91.

“I see so many people wanting to make YouTube videos because they want to get famous - they want to make money, which is all great stuff, and YouTube is really an amazing place for that, but make YouTube videos because you enjoy making them. If you don't enjoy making them, you are not going to keep making them. You are just going to fall off at some point, and you are going to get frustrated it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to be. If you make videos that you enjoy making, then you can't lose. It doesn't matter if you don't get a lot of subscribers. I was equally happy when I had a couple of hundred subscribers - I thought that was equally fun to have some people watching them. If you make videos that you enjoy making, other people will enjoy watching them. I really, really, strongly believe in that, so if you're not enjoying making videos, then don't make videos.”

PewDiePie (1989) Swedish YouTuber and video game commentator

How To Get Started On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVu8OWN90eY (10 August 2017)
2017, How To Get Started On YouTube

Money , People , Way , Happiness

“I believe that the poet is necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organized conceptions of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are imposed on people in the name of the future.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Poetry and Anarchism (1938)
Literary Quotes

People , Past , Future

“Accordingly we may explicate the new doctrine of Jesus into these three truths: (1) That God is the perfect Person, the central member in the universal society actuated by love; (2) that the soul is immortal; (3) that it is free, both in the sense of being the responsible author of all its acts, and in the sense that its fund of ultimate resources is equal to fulfilling its duty to love as God loves.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.256-7

Love , God , Truth , Soul

“[The present Government] believes in the supremacy (baasskap) of the European in his sphere, [and] equally in the supremacy (baasskap) of the Bantu in his own sphere. There is thus no policy of oppression here, but one of creating a situation which has never existed for the Bantu; namely, that, taking into consideration their languages, traditions, history and different national communities, they may pass through a development of their own. … The future Bantu towns and cities in the reserves may arise partly in conjunction with Bantu industries of their own in those reserves. In their establishment Europeans must be prepared to help with money and knowledge, in the consciousness that such industries must, as soon as possible, wholly pass over into the hands of the Bantu.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

Speech as Minister of Native Affairs on 5 December 1950, 10 quotes by Hendrik Verwoerd (Politics Web) https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/hendrik-verwoerd-10-quotes-hendrik-verwoerd-politics-web-20-september-2016, sahistory.org.za (20 September 2016)

Money , History , Communication , Knowledge

“The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors.”

Henry Becque (1837–1899) French dramatist

Le malheur de l'égalité, c'est que nous ne la voulons qu'avec nos supérieurs.

Conférences, notes d'album, poésies, correspondance http://books.google.com/books?id=TTQT9Fs7JoUC&q=%22Le+malheur+de+l%27%C3%A9galit%C3%A9+c%27est+que+nous+ne+la+voulons+qu%27avec+nos+sup%C3%A9rieurs%22&pg=PA111#v=onepage (1926).

“One plus one does not equal two.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Brace Yourself: The Five Heresies
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)

“The general limits of your freedom are merely these: that you do not trespass upon the equal rights of others.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Remarks to the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/eisenhower_citizenship_quotations.pdf (22 April 1954)
1950s

Freedom

“On same-sex marriage It’s a question of human rights, gender equality and equality.”

Alexander Stubb (1968) Finnish politician

Source: Majority of party leaders would support gay marriage http://yle.fi/uutiset/majority_of_party_leaders_would_support_gay_marriage/7654727, Yle.fi, 27 November 2014.

Marriage , Sex , Question

“The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Speech on No Union with Slaveholders (1857)

Women , Men

“Be kind, Helen, I am so tired of thinking;
There are so many difficult corridors of thought,
With equal iron banisters leading back again:
So many stone stairs, Helen, up which I sought
To rediscover the windy sky, and stand, blinking,
In the lost sunlight: as bright as pain,
Helen. I would give almost anything now
Even for pain.”

T. H. White (1906–1964) author

"Lost".

Pain , Thinking

“The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“[Burke] emphasized that the new forms of politics, which hope to organize society around the rational pursuit of liberty, equality, fraternity, or their modernist equivalents, are actually forms of militant irrationality.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Why I became a conservative," http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/21/feb03/burke.htm The New Criterion (February 2003).

Hope

“Both God and man hold each other in equally beautiful contempt.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 11, “Usurpation: Two Meteors, Prodigal of Light” (p. 196)

God , Beauty

“It’s not about creating an equal country, but it is about stopping the development of an underclass cut off from the rest of society. This focus could be a straight forward set of things like a living wage, supporting more effective pathways into work and an effective benefits system.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Jo Cox: Opportunity must knock in a fairer society http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/jo-cox-opportunity-must-knock-in-a-fairer-society-1-6857022 (24 September 2014)

Support , Country

“The great difficulty in forming legitimate governments is in persuading those forming the governments that those who are to be their fellow citizens are equal to them in the rights, which their common government is to protect. Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth-century Europe looked upon each other as less than human, and slaughtered each other without pity and without compunction. It was impossible for there to be a common citizenship of those who did not look upon each other as possessing the same right of conscience. How one ought to worship God cannot be settled by majority rule. A majority of one faith cannot ask a minority of another faith to submit their differences to a vote. George Washington, in 1793, said that our governments were not formed in the gloomy ages of ignorance and superstition, but at a time when the rights of man were better understood than in any previous age. Washington was right, in that such rights were, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, in America, better understood. But they were not perfectly understood, as the continued existence of chattel slavery attests. A difference concerning the equal rights of persons of color made the continued existence of a common government of all Americans impossible. A great civil war had to be fought, ending the existence of slavery, reuniting the nation and rededicating it to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

Men , God , War , Age

“The idea that ancient equal years of accumulated wisdom is a fallacy. […] In medicine, 'ancient' also means developed before we understood the causes of disease, before germ theory. It was based on ignorance then and age makes it no truer. We misguidedly look back to a golden age that never was; ours is the golden age of safe tested medicine, effective beyond placebo, in which we've cut infant mortality and conquered diseases, then forgotten they existed.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason, "The Irrational Health Service"
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)

Wisdom , Age , Disease , Idea

“Liberalism is the philosophy of the individual. Its ethic is liberty and its characteristic is autonomy — the freedom of the will from external constraint. It says "I shall…".
Socialism is the philosophy of the state. Its ethic is equality and its characteristic is coercion — the power, in the last resort, to exert force over individuals and groups. It says "you must…".
Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority”

Danny Kruger (1974) British politician and Conservative MP

the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says "we should…".
"Triangulation", p. 13
On Fraternity : Politics Beyond Liberty & Equality (2007)

Family , Communication , Freedom

“You can't say that New Age politics is "left wing" or "right wing". It is perfectly compatible with public or private ownership of the means of production, and it speaks equally much to rich and poor, young and old, white collar and blue.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 11.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

Age

“The only American woman deserving a place on U. S. paper currency is, of course, Anne Hutchinson, a devout 17th century Protestant New Englander who was a fearless champion of religious liberty, family, free speech, and equality — not preference — for women in religious affairs. Perhaps a new piece of currency could be created, one to which the attachment of her portrait would do honor. Ms. Hutchinson, however, is out of contention in the Democrats’ virulent anti-Southern currency crusade because her character traits – and the fifteen children she had with one husband — just do not jive with being Modern Democratic Party Women, those who glory in, and seek legal, economic, and political preference for their talents in whining, vamping, aborting, as well as recognition for their indispensable and eagerly given help in making the United States one of the world’s industrial-scale producers of both pornography and the dismembered corpses of infants. There may be something that can be done, however. The portrait of another Democratic icon named Woodrow Wilson now adorns the $100,000 bill, which appears to be to be used mainly in transactions.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Women , Children , World , Family

“A complete theory would have to answer, among others, the following questions, given two adjoining retinal areas of different stimulation, under what conditions will the corresponding parts of the behavioural (perceptual) field appear of different whiteness but equal brightness (or "illumination"), when of different brightness but equal whiteness? A complete answer to this question would probably supply the key to the complete theory of colour perception in the broadest sense.”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 260

Question , Sense , Appearance , Parting

“Cosmao’s … thesis is that societies obey two “sociological laws,” … according to which, when left to their own inertia, they “structure inequality” and “fabricate gods that become their masters.” God’s revelation in Jesus Christ expressly contradicts these two laws and should produce equality and destroy false gods. [Cosmao] contends, however, that Christianity has taken on the role of a “civil religion” and has thus become Christendom.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 134

God , Religion , Law , Christ

“Communism as an ideology had been passionately committed to women's equality and liberation, in every sense including the erotic, in spite of Lenin's own dislike of casual sexual promiscuity. (However, both Krupskaya and Lenin were among the rare revolutionaries who specifically favored the sharing of housework between the sexes)…Yet, with rather rare exceptions…they were not prominent in the first political ranks of their parties, or indeed at all, and in the new communist-governed states they became even less visible. Indeed, women in leading political functions virtually disappeared…When women streamed into a profession opened to them, as in the U. S. S. R., where the medical profession became largely feminized in consequence, it lost status and income. As against Western feminists, most married Soviet women, long used to a lifetime of paid work, dreamed of the luxury of staying at home and doing only one job…whatever the achievements and failures of the socialist world, it did not generate specifically feminist movements, and could indeed hardly have done so, given the virtual impossibility of any political initiatives not sponsored by state and party before the mid-1980s”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

The Age of Extremes (1992)

Women , World , Dreams , Sex

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. ____, (2015), majority opinion.

Love , Death , Women , Men

“… The past and the present call on you to advance. Let what you have gained be an impulse to something higher. Your nature is too great to be crushed. You were not created what you are, merely to toil, eat, drink, and sleep, like the inferior animals. If you will, you can rise. No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent. Do not be lulled to sleep by the flatteries which you hear, as if your participation in the national sovereignty made you equal to the noblest of your race. You have many and great deficiencies to be remedied; and the remedy lies, not in the ballot-box, not in the exercise of your political powers, but in the faithful education of yourselves and your children...”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Children , Education , Faith , Exercises

“And so for the remaining two hours of the meeting, Mr. Delgado and I sat in the front and directed the discussion. Or rather he directed it and I pretended I had an equal voice. A pattern quickly emerged in which my words would be greeted by silence and chilly looks; then Mr. Delgado would rephrase what I had said, as if interpreting from female to male language, with the added weight of an American accent.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

“The Empire Pool” Conclave: A Journal of Character, Issue 5, (Spring, 2013)
2010-

Silence

“There you have, then, a theoretical physics which is neither the theory of a believer nor that of a nonbeliever, but merely and simply a theory of a physicist; admirably suited to classify the laws studied by the experimenter, it is incapable of opposing any assertion whatever of metaphysics or of religious dogma, and is equally incapable of lending effective support to any such assertion.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

Law , Support , Study

“Men resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter IX, Section 82, p. 547

Men , Fate , Question

“Social equality is not a subject to be legislated upon, nor shall I ask that anything be done to advance the social status of the colored man, except to give him a fair chance to develop what there is good in him, give him access to the schools, and when he travels let him feel assured that his conduct will regulate the treatment and fare he will receive.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Second Inaugural Address (1873)

School , Color , Travel , Feeling

“With differing, but equally fallible views, I think it is best that they be aired and sorted out in an environment of civility, consistent with the institutions in which we are involved. In this case, the judicial system.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Thinking

“That the tragical fate of Tom, also, has too many times had its parallel, there are living witnesses, all over our land, to testify. Let it be remembered that in all southern states it is a principle of jurisprudence that no person of colored lineage can testify in a suit against a white, and it will be easy to see that such a case may occur, wherever there is a man whose passions outweigh his interests, and a slave who has manhood or principle enough to resist his will. There is, actually, nothing to protect the slave's life, but the character of the master. Facts too shocking to be contemplated occasionally force their way to the public ear, and the comment that one often hears made on them is more shocking than the thing itself. It is said, "Very likely such cases may now and then occur, but they are no sample of general practice." If the laws of New England were so arranged that a master could now and then torture an apprentice to death, would it be received with equal composure? Would it be said, "These cases are rare, and no samples of general practice"? This injustice is an inherent one in the slave system, — it cannot exist without it.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks

Life , Death , Fate , Law

“Here are six popular theses in the philosophical and psychological literature on motivation:1. Motivation is present in the animal kingdom but does not extend throughout it.
2. Motivated beings have a capacity to represent goals and means to goals.
3. A motivation-encompassing attitude may have either a goal or a means as its object.
4. Motivation varies in strength.
5. The stronger an agent’s motivation to A is, in comparison to the agent’s motivation for alternative courses of action, the more likely the agent is to A, other things being equal.
6. Whenever agents act intentionally, there is something they are effectively motivated to do.Divergent conceptions of motivation may be at work in philosophical thought about motivational matters. My concern in this book is a notion of motivation consistent with (among other things) these six claims. Readers who accept all six claims are likely to be more interested in the result than those who do not, but I conjecture that most readers do accept all of these claims, on some reading or other. Also, readers who reject one or more of these theses or who believe that no acceptable conception of motivation is consistent with all of them will be offered good reason to change their minds!”

Alfred Mele (1951) American philosopher

Introduction
Motivation and Agency (2003)

Books , Literature , Motivation , Change

“The immediacy of falling in love recognizes but one immediacy that is ebenburtig (of equal standing), and this is a religious immediacy; falling in love is too virginal to recognize any confidant other than God. But the religious is a new immediacy, has reflection in between-otherwise, paganism would actually be religious and Christianity not. That the religious is a new immediacy every person easily understands who is satisfied with following the honest path of ordinary common sense. And although I imagine I have but few readers, I confess nevertheless that I do imagine my readers to be among these, since I am far from wanting to instruct the admired ones, who make systematic discoveries a la Niels Klim, who have left their good skin in order to put on the “real appearance.””

Sören Kierkegaard book Stages on Life's Way

Stages on Life's Way, p. 161-162
1840s, Stages on Life's Way (1845)

Love , God , Confidence , Imagination

“I had to find a way in each picture to change the drawing, shaping and tactile qualities to make these elements expressive; as the color had subsumed the possibility the possibility of these parts being on a equal basis of expressiveness.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 10
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Color , Way , Change , Parting

“Jesus … never laughed. Nothing has ever equaled the seriousness of his life; it is clear that pleasure, recreation, anything that could divert the mind, had no part in it. The life of Jesus was utterly taut, wholly caught up in God and in the woes of men, and he gave to nature only what he could not have refused it without destroying it.”

Pierre Nicole (1625–1695) French Jansenists

Essais de Morale (1753), XIII, 390, in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927) as translated by Mary Ilford (1968), p. 118

Life , Men , God , Pleasure

“So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above. All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies. Yet the Islamic State and its kindred have broken out of the entire conceivable range of political activity, even its extreme forms. A “militant” spends much of his time promoting an idea or a political program within acceptable rules of behavior. The neo-Islamists, by contrast, recognize no rules apart from those they themselves set; they have no desire to win an argument through hard canvassing. They don’t even seek to impose a point of view; they seek naked and brutal domination. A “terrorist,” meanwhile, tries to instill fear in an adversary from whom he demands specific concessions. Yet the Islamic State et al. use mass murder to such ends. They don’t want to persuade or cajole anyone to do anything in particular; they want everything. “Islamic fighter” is equally inapt. An Islamic fighter is a Muslim who fights a hostile infidel who is trying to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith. That was not the situation in Mosul. No one was preventing the city’s Muslim majority from practicing their faith, let alone forcing them to covert to another religion. Yet the Islamic State came, conquered and began to slaughter. The Islamic State kills people because it can. And in both Syria and Iraq it has killed more Muslims than members of any other religious community. How, then, can we define a phenomenon that has made even al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Khomeinist gangs appear “moderate” in comparison? The international community faced a similar question in the 18th century when pirates acted as a law onto themselves, ignoring the most basic norms of human interaction. The issue was discussed in long negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and developed a new judicial concept: the crime against humanity. Those who committed that crime would qualify as “enemies of mankind” — in Latin, hostis generis humanis. Individuals and groups convicted of such a crime were no longer covered by penal codes or even the laws of war. They’d set themselves outside humanity by behaving like wild beasts… Neo-Islamist groups represent a cocktail of nihilism and crimes against humanity. Like the pirates of yesteryear, they’ve attracted criminals from many different nationalities… Having embarked on genocide, the neo-Islamists do not represent an Iraqi or Syrian or Nigerian problem, but a problem for humanity as a whole. They are not enemies of any particular religion, sect or government but enemies of mankind. They deserve to be treated as such (as do the various governments and semi-governmental “charities” that help them). To deal with these enemies of mankind, we need much more than frozen bank accounts and visa restrictions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Beyond terrorism: ISIS and other enemies of humanity" http://nypost.com/2014/08/20/beyond-terrorism-isis-and-other-enemies-of-humanity/, New York Post (August 20, 2014).
New York Post

Hostility , War , People , Fear

“With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 50

Freedom

“But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible. Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , People , World , Fear

“It’s a no-brainer that we should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.”

Masha Gessen (1967) Russian-American journalist and activist

"Life Matters — Why get married when you could be happy?" http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/monday-11th-june-2012/4058590 (11 June 2012 9:00AM), ABC, Australia

Marriage , Lie , Lying , Thinking

“Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows, and to be equally avoided.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

187
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Nature

“I was surprised, while preparing this lecture, to notice how, among my friends who had read the book, a division into two groups appeared. Both groups are equally discerning and educated, and as far as I can tell, equal in numbers. One group is eager to say that they don't understand a word of it, and there are artists and historians among them. Those of the other group claim that they understood it all on first reading, without difficulty. Of course I believe them both, without understanding the combination that separates them so sharply. Perhaps distinctive and contrasting features in the comprehension of works of art are responsible. What I say speaks to some, but not to others. Some are ready, and others are not. But when both someday find that they agree in understanding it, that day may be its last as a book alive in the dissension over its intelligibility.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

George Kubler (1982)"The Shape of Time, Reconsidered," in: Perspecta (Volume 19, MIT Press)

Books , Education , Art , Intelligence

“Long ago an uncalled rain fell
And a called-upon God stayed equally distant.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

"Prayer," p. 47
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Pit of the Stone”

God , Distant

“When, as a result of what was called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the priests had in fact almost entirely lost this function of guidance. Their place was taken by writers and scientists. In both cases it is equally absurd. Mathematics, physics, and biology are as remote from spiritual guidance as the art of arranging words. When that function is usurped by literature and science it proves there is no longer any spiritual life.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Morality and literature,” pp. 164-165
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Life , Art , Literature , Mathematics

“Two very different ideas are usually confounded under the name democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people, equally represented. Democracy, as commonly conceived and hitherto practiced, is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the people exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a government of privilege in favor of the numerical majority, who alone possess practically any voice in the state. This is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which the votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchisement of minorities.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Source: On Representative Government (1861), Ch. VII: Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only (p. 247)

People , Democracy , Idea

“The achievement of such a change of register through a sequential progression is a familiar procedure in the music of the "common practice." The significant distinction is that where Berg subdivides the registral span into equal, i. e., cyclic, intervals, his tonal predecessors subdivide it, in changing register through sequential transference, into the unequal intervals of the diatonic scale. As I pointed out in my last lecture, however, the qualitative transformation in the language of music which we have experienced in our century has a long prehistory. Beginning with Schubert, we occasionally find normal diatonic functions questioned in changes of key that progress along the intervals of the whole-tone scale, or the diminished-7th chord, or the augmented triad. An even more radical example of a cyclic progression in a tonal composition is…from Wagner”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Die Walkure, Act III
Page 96
The Listening Composer

Music , Question , Change

“In what respect… does the general theory of relativity differ…? The answer is: in its universality; the force of gravitation in the geometrical structure acts equally on all matter. There is here a close analogy between the gravitational mass M…(Sun) and the inertial mass m… (Earth) on the one hand, and the heat conduction k of the field (plate)… and the coefficient of expansion c… on the other. …The success of the general relativity theory… is attributable to the fact that the gravitational and inertial masses of any body are… rigorously proportional for all matter.”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Universe , Success , Sun

“She was grumbling. “The least he could have done was drop us near a town. Although in these parts they’d probably burn us as witches before asking any questions.” She shuddered. “I’m an awful snob about peasants, I’m afraid.”
I mentioned dryly that I thought those of her political persuasion had some sort of egalitarian duty to resist such prejudice. “Egalitarianism isn’t about prejudices,” she said, “it’s about equal shares of power. It’s the only means we have of steering some sort of even course through a future which is forever, by the very nature of the multiverse, unguessable. We have only institutions and a crude, fragile kind of democracy standing between us and absolute Chaos. That is why we must value and protect those institutions. And be forever reexamining them.””

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 8 “Revolutions” (p. 419)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Democracy , Question , Nature , Future

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the … confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Ford Fiftieth Anniversary Show, CBS and NBC (June 1953)

Women , Men , Confidence , Freedom

“The national Democratic Party and its southern affiliates labored mightily to re-subjugate the newly free blacks, eventually succeeding by implementing Jim Crow laws, motivating the birth of the Klan and then protecting it, establishing separate-but-equal schools and public facilities, and enacting codes of lawful segregation, all of which Democrats defended in a fight to the death until the 1960s. In U. S. history, from the ratification of the Constitution to the economic devastation wrought by Obama on contemporary black Americans, the men and women who run Democratic Party, from Jefferson and Jackson forward, have been the ferocious enemy of black Americans entering the mainstream of American life, to this day bending every tool of political power to keep them angry, unemployed, mired in poverty, and politically and economically dependent in a manner that approaches quite near to re-enslavement.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention https://archive.is/QBuxT (22 June 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Life , Death , Women , Men

“In our libertarian society, where individual choice is all, ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ have come to mean something very different. Liberals took for granted that freedom depended upon self-discipline. Libertarians decided that all such restraint was repressive. The individual had to be free from all attachments to family, culture, nation, institutions and traditions that might fetter freedom of choice. Since every individual was equally entitled to such free choices, the distinctions that were the basis of morality became eroded.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/2000_01.html

Family , Freedom , Dependency

“Appearing on the 700 Club on television, he incorrectly said, "The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman." [32] Dean later apologized for misstating the party's official position: "The Democratic Party remains committed to equal protection under the law for all Americans. How we achieve that goal continues to be the subject of a contentious debate, but our Party continues to oppose constitutional amendments that seek to short circuit the debate on how to achieve equality for all Americans."”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Marriage , Law , Appearance

“As the ancient myth makers knew we're children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

6 min 10 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]
Context: Unlike the La Pérouse expedition the Conquistadors sought not knowledge but Gold. They used their superior weapons to loot and murder, in their madness they obliterated a civilisation. In the name of piety, in a mockery of their religion, the Spaniards utterly destroyed a society with an Art, Astronomy and Architecture the equal of anything in Europe. We revile the Conquistadors for their cruelty and shortsightedness, for choosing death. We admire La Pérouse and the Tlingit for their courage and wisdom, for choosing life. The choice is with us still, but the civilisation now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew we're children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our Earth as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and the citadel of the stars. There are not yet obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilisations like ours rush inevitably headlong into self-destruction.

Love , Hostility , Children , History

“There is a scale in the meaning of the word socialist. In France it means about the same thing as a communist, when one uses plain language. When one uses the language of Monsieur Drumont, it means a Jew. In England a socialist is equal to a French conservative republican. In America it means a thief. In Germany it means an ingenious individual of restricted financial resources, who generally fails to blow up some important personage with wet dynamite. In Italy a socialist is an anarchist pure and simple, who wishes to destroy everything existing for the sake of dividing a wealth which does not exist at all. It also means a young man who orders a glass of water and a toothpick at a cafe, and is able to talk politics for a considerable time on this slender nourishment.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

Marzio's Crucifix (1887)

Water , Time , Wealth

“The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 3

Life , People , Health , Books

“A very eminent writer has observed, that "the conversion of the Gentile world, whether we consider the difficulties attending it, the opposition made to it, the wonderful work wrought to accomplish it, or the happy effects and consequences of it, may be considered as a more illustrious evidence of God's power, than even our Saviour's miracles of casting out devils, healing the sick, and raising the dead." Indeed, a miracle said to have been wrought without any attending circumstances to justify such an exertion of divine power, could not easily be rendered credible; and our author's argument proves no more. If it were related, that about 1700 years ago, a man was raised from the dead, without its answering any other end than that of restoring him to life, Iconfess that no degree of evidence could induce me tobelieve it; but if the moral government of God appeared in that event, and there were circumstances attending it which could not be accounted for by any human means, the fact becomes credible. When two extraordinary events are thus connected, the proof of one established the truth of the other. Our author has reasoned upon the fact as standing alone, in which case it would not be easy to disprove some of his reasoning; but the fact should be considered in a moral view - as connected with the establishment of a pure religion, and it then becomes credible. In the proof of any circumstance, we must consider every principle which tends to establish it; whereas our author, by considering the case of a man said to have been raised from the dead, simpli in a physical point of view, without any reference to a moral end, endavours to show that it cannot be rendered credible; and, from such principles, we may admit his conclusions without affecting the credibility of Christianity. The general principle on which he establishes his argument, is not the great foundation upon which the evidence of Christianity rests. He says, "Notestimony can be sufficient to establish a miracle, unless it be of such a kind, that the falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endavours to prove." Now this reasoning, at furthest, can only be admitted in those cases where the fact has nothing but testimony to establish it. But the proofs of Christianity do not rest simply upon the testimony of its first promulgators, and that of those who were affterwards the instruments of communicating it; but they rest principally upon the acknowledged and very extraordinary affects which were produced by the preaching of a few unlearned, obscure persons, who taught "Christ crucified;" and it is upon these indisuptable matters of ffact which we reason; and when the effects are totally unaccountable upon any principle which we can collect from the operation of human means, we must either admit miracles, or admit an effect without an adequate cause. Also, when the proof of any position depends upon arguments drawn from various sources, all concutring to establish its turh, to select some one circumstance, and atrempt to show that that alone is not sufficient to render the fact credible, and thence infer that it is not ture, is a conclusion not to be admitted. But it is thus that our author has endavoured to destroy the credibiliry of Christianity, the evidences of which depend upon a great variety of circumstances and facts which are indisputably true, all cooperating to confirm its truth; but an examination of these falls not whithin the plan here proposed. He rests all his arguments upon the extraordinary nature of the fact, considered alone by itself; for a common fact, with the same evidence, would immediately be admitted. I have endavoured to show, that the extraordinary nature, as much as the mosst common events are necessary to fulfill the usual dispensations of Providence, and therefore the Deity was then direted by the same motive as in a more ordinary case, that of affording us such assitance as our moral condition renders necessary. In the establishment of a pur religion, the proof of its divine origin may require some very extraordinary circumstances which may never afterwards be requisite, and accordingly we find that they have not happened. Here is therefore a perfect concistencty in the operation of the Deity, in his moral government, and not a violation of the laws of nature: Secondly, the fact is immediately connected with others which are indisputably true, and which, without the supossition of the truth of that fact, would be, at least, equally miraculous. Thus I conceive the reasoning of our author to be totally inconclusive; and the argumentss which have been employed to prove the fallacy of his conclusions, appear at the same time, fully to justify our belief in, and prove the moral certainty of, our holy religion.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 27; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA262," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 262-263

Life , God , Truth , World

“After settling the affairs of Ajmir, the conqueror marched "towards Dehli (may God preserve its prosperity and perpetuate its splendour!) which is among the chief (mother) cities of Hind. When he arrived at Dehli, he saw " a fortress which in height and strength had not its equal nor second throughout the length and breadth of the seven climes." The army encamped around the fort. " A torrent of blood flowed on the field of battle, and it became evident to the chiefs that if they did not seek for safety from the sword of the king of the earth, and if they should deliver into the hands of Satan the time of option and the reins of good counsel, the condition of Dehli would be like that of Ajmir; so from the dread of kingly punishment, the Rai and mukaddams of that country placed their heads upon the line of slavery, and their feet within the circle of obedience, and made firm the conditions of tribute [mdlguzdrt) and the usages of service.”

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

About the conquest of Delhi. Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 216. Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

God , Time , Country

“Like most people, I spent my childhood eating meat, wearing leather, and loving the cats, dogs, and mice I grew up with — and not once recognizing that I was treating some animals with respect and others as faceless commodities. I was well into adulthood before I understood that such an inconsistency is as ridiculous as it is unjust. The truth is, we have an impoverished understanding of the animals we share this planet with, and that has led to more than a little hubris on our part. … Humanity's abuse of animals can be merciless in the extreme, and in trying to relate such cruelties faithfully, I have written about incidents and industry practices that may disgust you. But it is crucial that we see beyond the veil that hides this world of suffering from us. Equally important, we need to know that there is some optimism amid all the despair. And so we begin with a story of hope.”

Mark Hawthorne (author) (1962) American activist

Bleating Hearts: The Hidden World of Animal Suffering (Changemakers Books, 2013), Introduction https://books.google.it/books?id=mXHvAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT15.

Love , People , Truth , World

“The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Attention and Will (1947), p. 216

“Nothing that Shakespeare ever invented was to equal Lincoln's invention of himself and, in the process, us.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Lincoln and the Priests of Academe"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

“From the last accounts from Great Britain, it appears absolutely necessary that there should be an augmentation of the American forces, in consequence of which I suppose there will be several promotions. As I have no desire of quitting the service, I hope the Congress will take no measure that will lay me under the disagreeable necessity of doing it. I have ever found myself exceeding happy under your Excellency's command. I wish my ability to deserve was equal to my inclination to merit.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (May 1776)

Hope , Appearance , Happiness

“I consequently tried it in such cases, and where there has not been destruction, or irreparable organic injury to the auditory apparatus, I can confidently say, I know of no means equal to hypnotism, for benefiting such cases. Of course, it cannot suit all cases, but I am satisfied it will succeed in a numerous class of cases, and in some which bid defiance to all other known modes of treatment.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

The case of treating deafness by hypnotizing, in in “Neurypnology; or, The rationale of nervous sleep, considered in relation ...”, p. 223.

Confidence

“Modern imperialism finds its ideological justification in the now fashionable linguistic philosophy which either regards all meanings as wholly arbitrary (e. g., Quine, White, Goodman, etc.), or reduces them to the facticity of everyday discourse (e. g., Wittgenstein, Austin, etc.). In this fashion, all meanings are either equally unfounded, or they can be founded only in the domain of the given. In either case, imperialism is implicitly justified, for, in the first case it is regarded as at least as rational a system as any other, thus neutralizing any possible rational arguments for its debunking, or else, in the second case, since all meanings reduce to the given and the given is, in fact, imperialist, imperialism itself becomes the criterion of all meaningfulness.”

Silvia Federici (1942) Italian American scholar, teacher, and feminist activist

"Viet Cong Philosophy: Tran Duc Thao" (1970)

Fashion

“…you could pick any two writers of equal skill, have them read each other's work, and they would both instantly proclaim each other the champion. Unless one of them happens to be Stephen King, because he's a jerk.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

God Ran Out of Faces
Fully Ramblomatic, Reviews

God , Jerk , Reading

“Education, journalism, technology, entertainment and business may also find better methods for their purpose than books and writing. But this does not mean that tapes and films have made books obsolescent—the contention is almost too ludicrous to be taken seriously. Books are certainly old fashioned, but only people with a very limited perception are silly enough to condemn ideas because of their age. It is, of course, equally silly to condemn the new fangled simply because it is strange, and I am full of admiration for the technologists who have developed all sorts of gadgets for the purpose of improving communications. However, I believe that all these fascinating machines are complementary to, and not substitutes for, books and the printed word.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Do Books Matter? (ed. Brian Baumfield), ISBN 0705700143, p. 15 (1973)
1970s

People , Books , Age , Education

“Zend-Avesta, a truly life giving word creating new life in knowledge as in faith! …As Fechner in his Nanna sought to show that plants have souls, so the point of departure of his contemplations in the Zend-Avesta is the doctrine that the stars have souls. The method he employs is not that of the abstraction of general laws by induction and the application and testing of these in the explanation of nature, it is analogy. He compares the earth with our own organism, which we know to be endowed with a soul. He searches out not merely in a one-sided way the similarities, but does equal justice to the dissimilarities, too, and so arrives at the conclusion that all the former show the earth to be a being with a soul, and that all the latter indicate that it is a being with a soul far higher than our own.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Life , Faith , Justice , Law

“I write about power, that's my real subject - how you get it, what you do with it, how you abuse it. I'm equally wary of liberals and conservatives.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Quoted in Le Devoir, September 14, 2009, Un surdoué du crime: On his writing.

“It was selfish and nothing more. The same way a child doesn't want to share her favorite toy. I understand that secrecy is part of, well, an aberrant behavior system. It comes from a bad place, not a place of light and generosity. And when you deprive your friends, or someone like your son Gunner, of experiences like I had, you're basically stealing from them. You're depriving them of something they have a right to. Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible human experience is a basic human right.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Mae, to Bailey; p. 303
The Circle (2013)

Way , Behavior , Understanding , Knowledge

“What do these feminists want? What do you want? You say equality. Oh! I don't want to seem rude, but …you're equal in the eyes of the law but not, excuse my saying so, in ability.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews

Law

“We find upon all occasions, the early Christian writers speak of the Father as superior to the Son, and in general they give him the title of God, as distinguished from the Son; and sometimes they expressly call him, exclusively of the Son, the only true God; a phraseology which does not at all accord with the idea of the perfect equality of all the persons in the Trinity. But it might well be expected, that the advances to the present doctrine of the Trinity should be gradual and slow. It was, indeed, some centuries before it was completely formed.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

Part I : The History of Opinions Relating to Jesus Christ, § III : The Supremacy was always ascribed to the Father before the Council Of Nice
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

God , Idea , Personality , Perfection