John Turner Quotes

In America, opportunity and equality are not a zero-sum game

Everybody has equal opportunity, and I think that is true for everything.

At its core, a fair and just society is one where opportunity is open to all - not just those at the top.

Let's build a country of opportunities, where everybody is equal before the law and where the rules of the game are honest and transparent, and the same for everyone.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.

Give us equality of enjoyment, equal right to expansion - it is as necessary to our prosperity as yours.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

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 of opportunity means the achievers must be allowed to achieve.

We are a nation without classes or special privileges.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

The balance of a commonwealth that is equal is of such nature that whatever falleth into her empire must fall equally.

Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions.

I have always been for absolute equality of privileges and obligations.

Democrats are fighting to make sure that everyone, no matter your background, has a chance to get ahead.

Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy.

I'm all for competition; competition is good. I just want to make sure the playing field is level.

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

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.

Fairness is not the end result, it's the opportunity. And everybody in America today has the opportunity to get ahead.

Middle America believes in fair play, an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail.

True equality means holding everyone accountable in the same way, regardless of race, gender, faith, ethnicity - or political ideology.

Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

Too often, we fall into the trap of thinking 'equal' means 'the same' and that we achieve equality by treating everyone identically.