Thomas Aquinas Quotes

Everyone has an equal right to inequality.

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.

All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality.

All men are born free.

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.

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.

Individual freedom and individual equality cannot co-exist…. no one since Thomas Jefferson ... has really believed it.

The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to be like each other.

No person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature

Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist

No nation can be freer than its most oppressed, richer than its poorest, wiser than its most ignorant.

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

Everyone is born free and equal.

All men are created equal.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

The United States of America was originally an experiment. But it was an experiment in recognizing God-given individual liberty and creating a government in which we no one is deemed better than another. And in which all of us are equal. Not equal in abilities, but equal in intrinsic worth and value.

All men are by nature born equally free and independent.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

All men are born equally free.

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

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Inequality of Mind and Body are so established by God Almighty in his Constitution of Human Nature that no art or policy can ever plain them down to a level.

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.--