Salmon P. Chase Quotes

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

All men are born free and equal.

All men are by nature born equally free and independent.

The most powerful idea in the modern world: All men are created equal.

All men are born free.

One man’s right is every man’s right.

I think the negro (sic) is included in the word “men” used in the Declaration of Independence – I believe the declaration that “all men are created equal” is the great fundamental principal upon which are free institutions rest.

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.--

All men are born free. Some are certainly endowed with grater intelligence, stronger will or a greater portion of wealth than others, but that gives them—the cleverer, the stronger, the richer—not the least right to rule over the duller, the weaker, the poorer. God, the Father of us all, has made mankind, without exception, to be happy, and so the obligation is laid on us, as far as is possible, to make each other happy.

We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal …

Everyone is born free and equal.

All men are created equal.

A man is born free.

When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world. Such a truth is woman's right to equal liberty with man. She was born with it. It was hers before she comprehended it. It is prescribed upon all the powers and faculties of her soul, and no custom, law nor usage can ever destroy it.

I recognize no rights but human rights—I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights.

No man who knows aught can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.

I have said that in their right to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior races are our equals.

This is the land of freedom. The press is at liberty. Every man has a right to express his opinion. Many thinks, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. He hath made you to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea. He hath crowned you with glory and honor; hath made you but a little lower than the angels; and, according to the Constitution of these United States, he hath made all men free and equal …. It is not the color of the skin that makes the man, but it is the principles formed within the soul.

Women will be no longer made the slaves of, or dependent upon men ... They will be equal in education, rights, privileges and personal liberty.

I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize.

Our fundamental principle is that people come before their government as equals.

I believe every man is born equal.

Everyone must have their rights, and in fact everyone gets their rights.

Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization.

Rejecting the fundamental provision of the Civil Rights Act is a rejection of the foundational promise of America that all men and women should be treated equally, a promise for which many Americans have lost their lives.