Quotes about equity

A collection of quotes on the topic of equity, justice, law, in-laws.

Quotes about equity

Bahá'u'lláh photo

“It is incumbent upon everyone to aid those daysprings of authority and sources of command who are adorned with the ornamant of equity and justice.”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

Kitáb-i-`Ahd http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/TB/tb-16.html (Book of the Covenant)

Nicolae Ceaușescu photo
James Tobin photo
Bahá'u'lláh photo
Pierre Joseph Proudhon photo

“I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Context: I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon photo
Anaximander photo

“All things must in equity again decline into that whence they have their origin for they must give satisfaction and atonement for injustice each in the order of time.”

On Nature, as quoted by Friedrich Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, from Thales to the Present Time (1885) Vol. 1, p. 35. https://books.google.com/books?id=BW5YAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA35

Adam Smith photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo

“A Court of equity knows its own province.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Mayor, &c. of Southampton v. Graves (1800), 8 T. R. 592.

John Woolman photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“I have always gone about this business on the basis that one cannot have a partnership unless there is equity among partners. Equity, of course, is historically a British concept, but I think that it is one that we bring to the [European] Community.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Prime Minister's Questions (3 December 1979) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1979/dec/03/european-council-dublin-meeting
First term as Prime Minister

John Lancaster Spalding photo
Austen Chamberlain photo
John Selden photo
John Adams photo
Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley photo

“It is true that Courts of equity, in administering justice, sometimes go further than the Courts of law.”

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley (1744–1804) British judge and politician

Houghton v. Matthews (1803), 3 Bos. & Pull. 497.

V. P. Singh photo
George Jessel (jurist) photo
Ron Paul photo
James A. Garfield photo
William Godwin photo

“Men may one day feel that they are partakers of a common nature, and that true freedom and perfect equity, like food and air, are pregnant with benefit to every constitution.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Vol. 1m bk. 1, ch. 3
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“[The Vijayanagar kings allowed] that every man may come and go, and live according to his own creed without suffering any annoyance, and without enquiring whether he is a Christian, Jew, Moor or Heathen. Great equity and justice is observed by all.”

Duarte Barbosa (1480–1545) Portuguese explorer and writer

The Book of Duarte Barbosa, vol. I, p. 202. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Alan Greenspan photo

“A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage-market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

July 2005 http://www.startribune.com/nation/12598281.html, in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee.
2000s

R. Venkataraman photo
Frances Kellor photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
David Hume photo

“The admirers and followers of the Alcoran insist on the excellent moral precepts interspersed through that wild and absurd performance. But it is to be supposed, that the Arabic words, which correspond to the English, equity, justice, temperance, meekness, charity were such as, from the constant use of that tongue, must always be taken in a good sense; and it would have argued the greatest ignorance, not of morals, but of language, to have mentioned them with any epithets, besides those of applause and approbation. But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers.”

David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste, 1760
Variant: The admirers and followers of the Alcoran insist on the excellent moral precepts interspersed through that wild and absurd performance. But it is to be supposed, that the Arabic words, which correspond to the English, equity, justice, temperance, meekness, charity were such as, from the constant use of that tongue, must always be taken in a good sense; and it would have argued the greatest ignorance, not of morals, but of language, to have mentioned them with any epithets, besides those of applause and approbation. But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers.

Thorstein Veblen photo
David Hume photo
John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly photo
John Prescott photo

“To the memory of Sir Thomas Denison, Knt., this monument was erected by his afflicted widow. He was an affectionate husband, a generous relation, a sincere friend, a good citizen, an honest man. Skilled in all the learning of the common law, he raised himself to great eminence in his profession; and showed by his practice, that a thorough knowledge of the legal art and form is not litigious, or an instrument of chicane, but the plainest, easiest, and shortest way to the end of strife. For the sake of the public he was pressed, and at the last prevailed upon, to accept the office of a judge in the Court of King's Bench. He discharged the important trust of that high office with unsuspected integrity, and uncommon ability. The clearness of his understanding, and the natural probity of his heart, led him immediately to truth, equity, and justice; the precision and extent of his legal knowledge enabled him always to find the right way of doing what was right. A zealous friend to the constitution of his country, he steadily adhered to the fundamental principle upon which it is built, and by which alone it can be maintained, a religious application of the inflexible rule of law to all questions concerning the power of the crown, and privileges of the subject. He resigned his office February 14, 1765, because from the decay of his health and the loss of his sight, he found himself unable any longer to execute it. He died September 8, 1765, without issue, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He wished to be buried in his native country, and in this church. He lies here near the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, who by a resolute and judicious exertion of authority, supported law and government in a manner which has perpetuated his name, and made him an example famous to posterity.”

Thomas Denison (1699–1765) British judge (1699–1765)

Memorial inscription, reported in Edward Foss, The Judges of England, With Sketches of Their Lives (1864), Volume 8, p. 266-268.
About

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly photo

“Courts of equity have always considered it of the greatest possible importance that parties should not sleep on their rights.”

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly (1802–1874) English Whig politician and judge

Browne v. Cross (1852), 14 Beav. 113.

Joseph Story photo

“He who seeks equity must do equity.”

Joseph Story (1779–1845) US Supreme Court justice

Equity Jurisprudence, 1st ed. (1836), § 59.

Alan Greenspan photo

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity – myself especially – are in a state of shocked disbelief.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

cited in: Quotes of 2008: 'We are in a state of shocked disbelief' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/quotes-of-2008-we-are-in-a-state-of-shocked-disbelief-1220057.html, Jan 01, 2009.
2000s

Warren Buffett photo

“Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

2004 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2004.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Sadao Araki photo
John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly photo
Franco Modigliani photo
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon photo
Sallust photo

“And, indeed, if the intellectual ability of kings and magistrates were exerted to the same degree in peace as in war, human affairs would be more orderly and settled, and you would not see governments shifted from hand to hand, and things universally changed and confused. For dominion is easily secured by those qualities by which it was at first obtained. But when sloth has introduced itself in the place of industry, and covetousness and pride in that of moderation and equity, the fortune of a state is altered together with its morals; and thus authority is always transferred from the less to the more deserving.”
Quod si regum atque imperatorum animi virtus in pace ita ut in bello valeret, aequabilius atque constantius sese res humanae haberent neque aliud alio ferri neque mutari ac misceri omnia cerneres. Nam imperium facile iis artibus retinetur, quibus initio partum est. Verum ubi pro labore desidia, pro continentia et aequitate lubido atque superbia invasere, fortuna simul cum moribus inmutatur. Ita imperium semper ad optumum quemque a minus bono transferetur.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter II, sections 3-6; translation by Rev. John Selby Watson

John Knox photo

“To promote a woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion or empire above any realme, nation, or citie, is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reveled will and approved ordinance, and finalie it is the subversion of good order, of all equitie and justice.”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous regiment of women 1558 reprint New York: Da Capo Press, 1972, p.9 as quoted in "Gender Difference and Tudor Monarchy: The Significance of Queen Mary I" https://muse.jhu.edu/article/474844/pdf, Judith Richards

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

“The nature of this trade, certainly not the most honourable in the world, affords room for much investigation and remark in a moral or humane point of view: in a political or commercial light it is perhaps less conspicuously an object of attention. It consists chiefly of commodities that are considered as holding a first rate place in the animal and the mineral world, for which in return the Africans receive the most rascally articles that the ingenuity of Europeans has found means to produce. In return to our fellow creatures, for gold, and for ivory, we exchange the basest of those articles that are suited to the taste or the fancy of a despicable set of barbarians. Whether the spirituous liquirs or the fire-arms that are sent there are most calculated for the destruction of the purchasers, might become a question not very easy to determine. The noxious quality of the one is at least equalled by the danger of attending the use of the other. There does not seem to be that regard to honour in this trade, which ought to make part of the nice character of the English merchant, unimpeachable, unimpeached, upon the 'Change of London or of Amsterdam. It seems as if we kept our honour for ourselves, and that with those barbarians (who are more our inferiors in address and cunning, than perhaps in any thing else) no honour, humanity, or equity, were at all necessary.”

William Playfair (1758–1824) British mathematician, engineer and political economist

Observations on the Trade to Africa, Chart XVI, page 65.
The Commercial and Political Atlas, 3rd Edition

Michael E. Porter photo

“Quasi-integration is to use debt or equity investments and other means to create alliances between vertically related firms without full ownership.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 301

Bill Gates photo
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo

“Equity has not relieved against gross improvidence.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Duke of Beaufort v. Neeld (1845), 12 CI. & F. 260.

Sallust photo

“But when sloth has introduced itself in the place of industry, and covetousness and pride in that of moderation and equity, the condition of a state is altered together with its morals; and thus authority is always transferred from the less to the more deserving.”
Verum ubi pro labore desidia, pro continentia et aequitate libido atque superbia invasere, fortuna simul cum moribus immutatur. Ita imperium semper ad optimum quemque a minus bono transfertur. (II)

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC)

Enoch Powell photo

“It is conventional to refer to the United Nations in hushed tones of respect and awe, as if it were the repository of justice and equity, speaking almost with the voice of God if not yet acting with the power of God. It is no such thing. Despite the fair-seeming terminology of its charter and its declarations, the reality both of the Assembly and of the Security Council is a concourse of self-seeking nations, obeying their own prejudices and pursuing their own interests. They have not changed their individual natures by being aggregated with others in a system of bogus democracy…Does anybody seriously suppose that the members of the United Nations, or of the Security Council, have been actuated in their decisions on the Argentine invasion of the Falklands by a pure desire to see right done and wrong reversed? That was the last thing on their minds. Everyone of them, from the United States to Peru, calculated its own interests and consulted its own ambitions. What moral authority can attach a summation of self-interest and prejudice? I am not saying that nations ought not to pursue their own interests; they ought and, in any case, they will. What I am saying is that those interests are not sanctified by being tumbled into a mixer and shaken up altogether. An assembly of national spokesmen is not magically transmuted into a glorious company of saints and martyrs. Its only redeeming feature is its impotence…The United Nations is a colossal coating of humbug poured, like icing over a birthday cake, over the naked ambitions and hostilities of the nations.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'We have the will, we don't need the humbug', The Times (12 June 1982), p. 12
1980s

Hillary Clinton photo
Robert A. Dahl photo
Francesco Saverio Nitti photo
Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
John Eardley Wilmot photo

“Total abolition [of vivisection] … will be achieved sometime, when the conduct of humanity toward all that breathes and suffers shall be governed by ideas of altruistic equity.”

“Vivisection in America”, in Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, New York and London: Macmillan, 1894, p. 145 https://archive.org/stream/03021000R.nlm.nih.gov/03021000R#page/n158/mode/2up.

James Otis Jr. photo

“An act against the Constitution is void; an act against natural equity is void.”

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) Lawyer in colonial Massachusetts

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

Warren Buffett photo

“An irresistible footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities — at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1978 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1978.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Alexander H. Stephens photo

“As to whether we shall have war with our late confederates, or whether all matters of differences between us shall be amicably settled, I can only say that the prospect for a peaceful adjustment is better, so far as I am informed, than it has been. The prospect of war is, at least, not so threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President Lincoln’s inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was expected. Fort Sumter, it is believed, will soon be evacuated. What course will be pursued toward Fort Pickens, and the other forts on the gulf, is not so well understood. It is to be greatly desired that all of them should be surrendered. Our object is peace, not only with the North, but with the world. All matters relating to the public property, public liabilities of the Union when we were members of it, we are ready and willing to adjust and settle upon the principles of right, equity, and good faith. War can be of no more benefit to the North than to us. Whether the intention of evacuating Fort Sumter is to be received as an evidence of a desire for a peaceful solution of our difficulties with the United States, or the result of necessity, I will not undertake to say. I would feign hope the former. Rumors are afloat, however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point is, keep your armor bright and your powder dry.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

John of Salisbury photo

“Law is the gift of God, the model of equity, a standard of justice, a likeness of the divine will, the guardian of well-being, a bond of union and solidarity between peoples, a rule defining duties, a barrier against the vices and the destroyer thereof, a punishment of violence and all wrongdoing.”
Lex donum Dei est, æquitatis forma, norma justitiæ, divinæ voluntatis imago, salutis custodia, unio et consolidatio populorum, regula officiorum, exclusio et exterminatio vitiorum, violentiæ et totius injuriæ pœna.

Bk. 8, ch. 17
Policraticus (1159)

Edmund Burke photo
Warren Buffett photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Emma Goldman photo
Mark Satin photo
Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet photo

“No tort is assignable, in law or equity. It is not within any species of action at common law.”

Joseph Yates (judge) (1722–1770) English barrister and judge

4 Burr. Part. IV., 2386.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley photo

“I think that common law is better than equity.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

Angus v. Clifford (1891), L. J. Rep. (N. S.) 60 C. D. 455.

Learned Hand photo
Eugene Fama photo

“Although size and book to market equity seem like ad hoc variables for explaining average stock returns, we have reason to expect that they proxy for common risk factors in returns.”

Eugene Fama (1939) American economist and Nobel laureate in Economics

Source: Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds, 1993, p. 7

Nouriel Roubini photo
African Spir photo

“The well understood equity as well as interest of society demand that we work on much more to prevent crime and offenses than to punish them.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 52.

Washington Irving photo

“In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, with equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affability with which he received them, and listened to their complaints. […]”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Mahomet and his successors, George P. Putnam, 1850, p. 330.
Mahomet and his successors (1849)

Benjamin Graham photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo

“We are now Courts of equity, and must decide the thing according to all the rights.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Cooper v. Griffin (1892), 61 L. J. Rep. Q. B. 566.

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo

“It was said by a very learned Judge, Lord Macclesfield, towards the beginning of this century that the most effectual way of removing land marks would be by innovating on the rules of evidence; and so I say. I have been in this profession more than forty years, and have practised both in Courts of law and equity; and if it had fallen to my lot to form a system of jurisprudence, whether or not I should have thought it advisable to establish two different Courts with different jurisdictions, and governed by different rules, it is not necessary to say. But, influenced as I am by certain prejudices that have become inveterate with those who comply with the systems they found established, I find that in these Courts proceeding by different rules a certain combined system of jurisprudence has been framed most beneficial to the people of this country, and which I hope I may be indulged in supposing has never yet been equalled in any other country on earth. Our Courts of law only consider legal rights: our Courts of equity have other rules, by which they sometimes supersede those legal rules, and in so doing they act most beneficially for the subject. We all know that, if the Courts of law were to take into their consideration all the jurisdiction belonging to Courts of equity, many bad consequences would ensue. To mention only the single instance of legacies being left to women who may have married inadvertently: if a Court of law could entertain an action for a legacy, the husband would recover it, and the wife might be left destitute: but if it be necessary in such a case to go into equity, that Court will not suffer the husband alone to reap the fruits of the legacy given to the wife; for one of its rules is that he who asks equity must do equity, and in such a case they will compel the husband to make a provision for the wife before they will suffer him to get the money. I exemplify the propriety of keeping the jurisdictions and rules of the different Courts distinct by one out of a multitude of cases that might be adduced.... One of the rules of a Court of equity is that they cannot decree against the oath of the party himself on the evidence of one witness alone without other circumstances: but when the point is doubtful, they send it to be tried at law, directing that the answer of the party shall be read on the trial; so they may order that a party shall not set up a legal term on the trial, or that the plaintiff himself shall be examined; and when the issue comes from a Court of equity with any of these directions the Courts of law comply with the terms on which it is so directed to be tried. By these means the ends of justice are attained, without making any of the stubborn rules of law stoop to what is supposed to be the substantial justice of each particular case; and it is wiser so to act than to leave it to the Judges of the law to relax from those certain and established rules by which they are sworn to decide.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Bauerman v. Eadenius (1798), 7 T. R. 667.

Nicholas Barr photo
Frank Chodorov photo
Eugene Fama photo
Herbert Spencer photo
Michele Bachmann photo
V. P. Singh photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo

“Most of the time when these things go public… private-equity firms want to get the hell out of there. They want to monetize their investment and get their guys off the board, because they don't want to be caught in a conflict of interest.”

Jay W. Lorsch (1932) American organizational theorist

Jay W. Lorsch, quoted in: "[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2006-02-26/going-private Going Private: Hotshot managers are fleeing public companies for the money, freedom, and glamour of private equity," in bloomberg.com, February 27, 2006