Katha Pollitt Quotes

Think of US slavery in 1850, or the subjection of women. Both of these injustices could have been - and were! - defended by pointing out, quite correctly, that this situation of slaves and women had been improving throughout the preceding century. Slaves, in particular, were worked less hard, beaten and raped less frequently, better fed, and less often ripped apart from their families. So would a celebration of moral progress have been appropriate in 1850? Surely not. Slavery could have been and should have been abolished - then, if not before.

Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.

We are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world - for whites, anyway.

India will have to hang down her head in shame if even one person is left who is said in any way to be untouchable.

It's really obvious that we have very serious inequality in this country across many different spectrums. Yes, we can talk about the form of protest or the way it's done or this or that. But it's still not really the conversation that I think we desperately need to have more of in this country.

But the truth is that throughout human history slavery has existed. And America came along as the first country to end it within 150 years. And we get no credit for that.

There are so many people out there struggling with racism, or their sexuality or where they're brought up or how wealthy their family was ans these issues are not hidden, they were in the late 19 century and they're still important today.

We have tolerance, respect, and equality in our written laws but not in the hearts of some of our people.

I'd like to change the world. Eradicate poverty, racism, and sexism... all the usual things.

We can read reams of social justice literature without encountering a single example of the proportional representation of different groups in endeavors open to competition—in any country in the world today, or at any time over thousands of years of recorded history.

God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one - fifth of our vast population as untouchables.

My fight against untouchability is a fight against the impure in humanity.

If you believe that all men are created equal, then a child's death in some other country is no less tragic than in the United States.

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

In most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.

I'm offended by the is-ought fallacy, which has been used to justify slavery, women not being allowed to vote, children working in factories.

I thank God that I've lived long enough to see what I have seen, and I pray that people will continue to do better. We are doing better, it may not seem so, but there was a time when people were lynched in the middle of the street and it was not against the law. We are doing better, but we have so much more to do.

I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done...in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done!

When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

The world isn't fair, but as long as it's tilting in my direction, I find that there's a natural cap to my righteous indignation.

Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. ... he hath made all men free and equal. Then why should one worm say to another, 'Keep you down there, while I sit up yonder; for I am better than thou?

I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which is illiterate children.

No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality.

May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence.