Honore de Balzac Quotes

All men are created equal. Some, it appears, are created a little more equal than others.

… all men have equal rights; but not to equal things.

There is no justice in social justice, and there is no equality in social equality.

Inequality of any kind, once considered a normal, natural part of human existence, came to be seen in the course of the twentieth century as increasingly illegitimate.

Liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

And Justice for Some

Inequality is a fact. Equality is a value.

Justice is not available to all equally; it is something that many of us must struggle to achieve.

No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible.

All inequality that has no special utility to justify it is injustice.

I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.

All men are created unequal.

Sometimes it leads me even to hesitate whether I am strictly correct in my idea that all men are born to equal rights, for their conduct seems to me to contravene the doctrine.

Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.

I don't think we live in a particularly equal society.

I think that children are acutely sensitive to injustice because they live in a world that is absolutely filled with injustice. They have very, very little power, and they are extremely aware of power relations.

The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.

American society will never completely understand the true meaning of equality.

I do know that God created us equal and we're not living up to it.

In articulating all my feelings about marriage equality, I almost don't know where to begin. And perhaps that's part of the problem. Why do we have to explain ourselves when it comes to issues of fairness and equality? Why is common sense not enough?

I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.