Zadie Smith Quotes

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.

Conservatives often say that we should care not about equality of outcomes but about equality of opportunity.

To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth ought not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration.

The world is not a meritocracy, as much as we may like to pretend that it is. And we have a long way to go before we really reward people based on their own merit.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

Republicans many times can't get the words 'equality of opportunity' out of their mouths. Their lips do not form that way.

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.

If you get so unequal that people believe they don't have a chance, that the field isn't level for them and their children, that puts democracy at risk.

Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.

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.

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

Our goal is a classless society.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

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

In a country where there is no privileged class, genius and industry may attain the highest honors.

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.

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

We are building a country where a person's prospects are determined by their own initiative and hard work and not by the color of their skin, place of birth, gender, language, or income of their parents.

I think this country is genuinely a meritocracy.

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

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

We know that in our free market economy some will prosper more than others. What we don't accept is the idea that some folks won't even get a chance.

We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.