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Equality Quotes

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Equality Quotes

“At the heart of the American paradigm is the perception that law and its agents . . . police officers, correctional officers, attorneys and judges . . . are color-blind and thus justice is impartial, objective and seeks la verdad (the truth). But, la realidad (reality) differs.”

“The crystallized opposition of the segregationists was not unexpected; but we had only dimly foreseen the resistance that came from another quarter. Victor Hugo has spoken of the "madmen of moderation" who are "un-paving hell." The descendants of Hugo's moderates appeared in the fall of 1963, bearing banners inscribed with the message: Order Before Justice. For the most part, these moderates counted themselves as friends of the civil-rights movement; certainly they were in no sense moral bedfellows of the forces of segregation and violence. But they were now wrestling with a logic that an earlier, more passive, movement had never forced them to question. They had long settled on a simple compromise, one easy to accept and to live with. They could countenance token changes, and they had always believed these would make the Negro content. They were not asking him to stay in his old ghetto. They were ready to build a brand-new ghetto for him with a small exit door for a few. But the breath of the new movement chilled them. The Negro was insisting upon the mass application of equality to jobs, housing, education and social mobility. He sought a full life for a whole people. These moderates had come some distance in step with the thundering drums, but at the point of mass application they wanted the bugle to sound a retreat.”

“Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological.”

“In order to have a happy ending, in order to be triumphant, in order to be heroic, you have to tell your own story. The women's movement knows that; black people know that; brown people know that; yellow people know that. You have to be able to tell your own story in order to show that you are worthy--that you belong.”

“Thus through two centuries a continuous indoctrination of Americans has separated people according to mythically superior and inferior qualities while a democratic spirit of equality was evoked as the national ideal. These concepts of racism, and this schizophrenic duality of conduct, remain deeply rooted in American thought today. This tendency of the nation to take one step forward on the question of racial justice and then to take a step backward is still the pattern. Just as an ambivalent nation freed the slaves a century ago with no plan or program to make their freedom meaningful, the still ambivalent nation in 1954 declared school segregation unconstitutional with no plan or program to make integration real. Just as the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1868 and refused to enforce it, the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1964 and to this day has failed to enforce it in all its dimensions. Just as the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 proclaimed Negro suffrage, only to permit its de facto withdrawal in half the nation, so in 1965 the Voting Rights Law was passed and then permitted to languish with only fractional and halfhearted implementation.”

“The needs of the black community for adequate jobs, housing, and education can be met only by developing a political strategy that will attract a majority of Americans to a program for social change. There are whites who are unemployed and white workers whose real income is steadily decreasing as the cost of living rises. Both these groups share with blacks the desire for increased and upgraded employment opportunities. Let us build a movement with them. there are whites living in substandard housing and paying exorbitant rents. Their children attend schools that are overcrowded and understaffed. They share with blacks the desire for massively funded programs of housing and education. Let us build a movement with them also. And there are those more affluent whites of liberal persuasion who sincerely desire social justice. They too should be our allies. These are positive points around which a political majority can be built. Such a strategy is the only means by which black people will achieve social and economic equality within the context of contemporary American society.”

“While actually intersex individuals are real and incredibly rare, and actually transgendered people are also real and very rare, much of modern "gender ideology" is dangerous and contagious, and many of the interventions (hormonal, surgical) are not reversible.”

“All these girls swooning over my nephew. I hope you aren't one of them." "I wouldn't be eligible, Your Highness," Cinderella said, swallowing the lump that suddenly formed in her throat. "All because of some silly laws that my silly ancestors made. The world is changing, Cindergirl, and anyone- I do repeat, anyone- can make something of herself if she puts her mind to it. Oh, to be young today!" "You think a servant could become a princess?" "My husband came back from a family without wealth, but he was smart- and practical. He was a shrewd businessman, and became one of the richest men in Aurelais. Anybody can become anything, so long as they put their minds to it." She eyed Cinderella. "Hard work and fortitude, Cindergirl, is what will get you ahead. Not swooning over my nephew.”

“How can we humans claim ourselves to be superior to other animals? Is it because of the technological development we’ve made? Destroying one resource to create another one! Egotism is what we humans are fraught with… We boast of our intellectual superiority, but why do we have to depend upon a dog to sniff out a thief, one from our own race? Why do we need a dog for that? Why don't we just train ourselves and do the job on our own? The defence we produce here is that we don't have as many olfactory receptors in our nose as there are in a dog, and a part of a dog’s brain is devoted to analyzing smells. But then why is our developed logical and intellectual ability considered superior to their developed instinctive abilities? Isn't it ironical that a race that considers itself superior to others needs another race that it looks down upon, to sniff out someone of its own race? Doesn't it seem at variance with our own asset, logic that is, that we, who haven't yet developed a reliable device to predict an earthquake, consider ourselves better than a race that has an uncanny ability to predict future catastrophe? Being at the top of the food chain isn’t everything; even the dinosaurs disappeared, and the ones which were at the bottom still exist… I truly believe in nature's impartiality.”

“When we are underconfident, we desire to be accepted unconditionally. That way no matter how much goes wrong and how little we accomplish, we are still guaranteed a place in society. Those who are so damaged in confidence and self-esteem that they assume they will never get anything right, and never accomplish anything of note, demand not only a place in society, but one equal to those who get things right and accomplish things. Although a defensive outlook, this viewpoint is projected forward as a pre-emptive strike on feelings of inadequacy, regret and doubt. When enough people gather who have this viewpoint, we create a society where social factors - being nice, novelty of approach, possessions owned, ironic or unusual lifestyles - become more important than ability. If you want to know how the path to Idiocracy is paved, this is it. Natural selection now favors the social, not the competent, and so society breeds future generations of incompetent (but very sociable) people.”

“A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club. That's equality. If the United States government doesn't want you and me to have rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don't want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us non-violence!!!”

“The Dream Lives On (The Sonnet) Washington had a dream, The dream of free America. Martin Luther had a dream, The dream of equal America. Adi Shankara had a dream, The dream of advaita Bharat. Chandra Bose had a dream, The dream of azad Bharat. Naskar too has a dream, The dream of undivided Earth. My body will perish soon but, The dream will live on through hearts. Gone are the days of nationalistic insecurity. Lo the time comes for expansion of humanity.”

“The Naskarean Sonnet It ain't easy to get Naskar, For Naskar is no being binary. In a world full of dualities, Naskar is an emblem of inclusivity. Think not it to be a person, For the person perished in line of duty. What lives today is the idea, The idea of struggle for undivided amity. Every human who helps a human, Is a manifestation Naskarean. Wherever there is prejudice and inequality, They appear as a living revolution. When one Naskar dies a thousand will rise. The dream of unity will never face demise.”

“Just as most American employers give us ‘at will’ employments, our entire existence has become subject to their will. We have arrived at a point where most of our stress is a result of not knowing whether we will get the next paycheck. Exploitative employers love it this way. So long as we are afraid, they are sure to get 100 percent submission from us. We cannot let our toxic way of working be accepted as the norm and as the typical American work ethics. We deserve and can do much, much better than this.”

“Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate and control others. We are taught that this will to dominate is more biologically hardwired in males than in females. In actuality, dominator culture teaches us that we are all natural-born killers but that males are more able to realize the predator role. In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.”

“Some women do not masturbate for pleasure; they masturbate to make a political statement: to remind us that women do not really need men (or at least not as much and as frequently as every single male chauvinist and every single misogynist believes).”

“The religious right sees every group trying to achieve equality with them as a threat, because if they become equal to them, THEY won't be able to abuse their human rights anymore. Giving other people equality WITH THEM, in their minds takes something away from THEM - POWER - and that TERRIFIES them. It scares them shitless.”

“The True Comrade Is A Pacifist! Love Is What Drives All Great Revolutionaries, Love For The People, Love For The Country, And, Most Importantly Love For All Of Humanity! A Revolution Only Requires One's Voice, Not A Single Bullet Is Needed To Be Fired...We Are All Comrades In The Battlefield Of Life! Listen To The Oppressed, Speak Up Against Injustice It Is Our Duty As Sane Human Beings, Feel The Pain Of Those Who Are Suffering Because The Suffrage Of Another It Is Your Own...We Are All Brothers, And, Sisters In This Game We Call Life!”

“The women I interviewed seemingly “opted out” of what Rachel, whom I cited earlier, called “the enormous experiment of engaging in capitalism.” Their choice to leave the workplace can be seen, as some of them suggested, as a resistance to neoliberal capitalism—to its exclusive valorization of the sphere of commodity production and the toxic competitive work cultures on which it depends. Their embrace of full-time motherhood can be understood as an attempt to shift priorities and to put care before competition. It is seemingly removed from the demands of advanced capitalism and the public sphere of work that they left, but which their government promotes and their husbands—mostly in high-powered, high-income jobs—occupy. Yet, as a consequence of heading home—a choice that was in part imposed by the pressures of advanced capitalism—women have become heads of their home who run their families as small enterprises, and endorse “intensive mothering”72 as a means of trying to ensure the invincible middle-class future and security of their children. In rechanneling their professional skills and competitive spirit through their children, and taking on the role of family CEO, these women may be reproducing what many found so brutal in the workplace. They have reproduced neoliberalism in the sense that their children have become human capital—investing in them is a way of increasing good returns in the future.73 In the words of Sara, the former senior financial director, “And the competition lives on, it’s just in a totally different guise.”" (from "Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality" by Shani Orgad)”

“I am a convinced advocate of economic and social equality because I know that, without it, liberty, justice, human dignity, morality, and the well-being of individuals, as well as the prosperity of nations, will never amount to more than a pack of lies. But since I stand for liberty as the primary condition of mankind, I believe that equality must be established in the world by the spontaneous organization of labor and the collective ownership of property by freely organized producers' associations, and by the equally spontaneous federation of communes, to replace the domineering paternalistic State.”