Murray Rothbard Quotes

My idea of society is that while we are born equal, meaning that we have a right to equal opportunity, all have not the same capacity.

The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.

I want a fair housing bill. We’ve got to end this Goddamn discrimination against Negroes. Until people, whether they’re purple, brown, black, yellow, red, green, or whatever – live together, they’ll never know they have the same hopes for their children, the same fears, troubles, woes, ambitions.

In our insistence upon equality of opportunity has our system advanced beyond all the world.

If the spirit of equality means anything, it means like opportunity, and if we once lose like opportunity, we lose the only chance we have toward equality throughout the nation.

We are a nation without classes or special privileges.

Achieving legal rights is only a first step in achieving equality.

Here, no privileged orders – no factitious distinctions in society – no hereditary nobility – no royal prerogatives exist, to interpose barriers between the people, and to create distinct classifications in society. All men being considered as enjoying an equality of rights, the propriety and necessity of dispensing, without distinction, the blessings of education ….

I want everyone to work to be equal!

I feel passionately that the opportunities I have had should be available to everyone.

Liberals don't ask 'Does it work?' They ask 'Does it equalize?'

We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.

Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle.

Turtle makes all men equal.

Equality is what does not exist among mortals.

Equality is not possible. The pursuit of equality, however, people really love that. For some reason, people attach the most wonderful of motives to people who say they see all this inequality out there and need to fix it. It's just not fair. You'll hear it manifest itself in discussions about the so-called widening gap between the rich and the poor or the widening gap between men and women. It's like actually two twin beds.

Life is not fair... Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.

A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.

We understand the concept of equality, that we all want to be equal. But I think this is absolutely not true. I don't think anybody really wants to be equal. Everybody wants to be more equal.

The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

We wish, in a word, equality - equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.

The promise of equality is not the same as true equality.

There should be no differentiation amongst the people. All should be treated as equals. On this basis the Brahmin must give up his false prestige. In the interest of the society. I say that the blind beliefs should be given up

We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

Ted Kennedy’s life’s work was not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard, to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity, to make real the dream of our founding.