Equity Quotes

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.”
― Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid

“Equality of opportunity is not enough. Unless we create an environment where everyone is guaranteed some minimum capabilities through some guarantee of minimum income, education, and healthcare, we cannot say that we have fair competition. When some people have to run a 100 metre race with sandbags on their legs, the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair. Equality of opportunity is absolutely necessary but not sufficient in building a genuinely fair and efficient society.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“James Ed went to his office and sat down at his small, metal desk. He smiled as he considered Penny Jones’ plan to shame him out of her life. Would he let her do that? He shook his head as he thought, No way in hell!”
― Shafter Bailey

“That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.

- Book VI, 54.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. I told the congregation that Walter's case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“With you it is always the law, never equity.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“Resist when the world tries to convince you otherwise.”
― Nic Stone, Dear Justyce

“The majority of any society comprised, Smith knew, not landlords or merchants, but "servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds," who derived their income from wages. Their welfare was the prime concern of economic policy, as Smith conceived it. "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable," he wrote. "It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged." The chief economic concern of the legislator, in Smith's view, ought to be the purchasing power of wages, since that was the measure of the material well-being of the bulk of the population. (p. 64)”
― Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought

“Anger should be especially kept down in punishing, because he who comes to punishment in wrath will never hold that middle course which lies between the too much and the too little. It is also true that it would be desirable that they who hold the office of Judges should be like the laws, which approach punishment not in a spirit of anger but in one of equity.”
― Johannes Voet

“Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy—where information is free and equally available to everyone. People tend to take that for granted, and they don’t realize what is at stake when that is put at risk.”
― Carla Hayden

“A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Connections, like treasury bonds, are issued to every rich white person upon exiting the womb. Whenever one of them gets high and crashes their parents’ car, whenever they get busted for buying coke from an undercover, whenever they get caught messing with the wrong gangsters on vacation, they make a call, send a text, or whip out their AMEX.”
― Mateo Askaripour, Black Buck

“Imagine a world where empathy replaces fear, equity dismantles hierarchies, and safety becomes a right, not a privilege.”
― Ken Breniman, Subversive Acts of Humanity : A Survival Guide for Choosing Evolution over Self-Destruction

“Real progress doesn’t leave people behind. If it does, it isn’t progress—it’s a race to nowhere.”
― Lawrence Nault

“If we genuinely believe ‘we belong to each other,’ we must dismantle the systems and beliefs that perpetuate division.”
― Ken Breniman, Subversive Acts of Humanity : A Survival Guide for Choosing Evolution over Self-Destruction

“Acknowledging privilege isn’t about shame—it’s about accountability and belonging.”
― Ken Breniman, Subversive Acts of Humanity : A Survival Guide for Choosing Evolution over Self-Destruction

“One way to make sure that white and Black Americans have similar levels of wealth would be for society to get a lot more equal, lifting poor Black people out of poverty. But another way to make sure that white and Black Americans have similar wealth would be for a small number of Black people to become extremely rich.

Marxists like Reed are aware of the fact that the latter course of action would ask much less of the rich and powerful, allowing them to keep most of their wealth. This, they worry, makes it much more likely that societies will try to achieve equity through such comparatively cosmetic changes that don’t actually reduce overall inequality. And if America manages to create a few dozen Black billionaires while millions of Americans of all races continue to live in poverty, they conclude, precious little is gained for most people: “The disparitarian ideal is that blacks and other nonwhites should be represented on every rung on the ladder of economic hierarchy in rough proportion to their representation in the general population.” But “a society where making black and white people equal means making them equally subordinate to a . . . ruling class is not a more just society, just a differently unjust one.”
― Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

“For this Rosh Hashonah--the Jewish New Year--
this is what I am reflecting on:
Sh'mirat Ha'Lashon,
guarding our speech.

These are not the worst possible times our country has known
but it may well be leading to them.
While we are holding out for truth, freedom, and equity/parity/diversity/inclusivity,
we must also hold out for (and require from ourselves)
gentleness, compassion, empathy, and perspective.”
― Shellen Lubin

“Oh, how we need MLK Day right now--
need MLK--his vision, his words,
his feistiness--
not the way he's painted by the centrists
(no less the right),
but the way he stood up for what was necessary
to make America live up to its ideals
(yes, he was imperfect
yes, bits of hypocrisy and misogyny,
and yet mostly brilliance and caring and
extraordinary efforts on behalf of all Americans
because we are all deprived of justice and equity
if any of us are).”
― Shellen Lubin

“This determination of Negro Americans to win freedom from all forms of oppression springs from the same deep longing that motivates oppressed peoples all over the world. The rumblings of discontent in Asia and Africa are expressions of a quest for freedom and human dignity by people who have long been the victims of colonialism and imperialism. So in a real sense the racial crisis in America is a part of the larger world crisis.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

“Should God and Devil prove real, both would revile me alike.”
― Danilo Vukovljak

“If we truly want equality for all races, should we not get rid of affirmative action programs that funnel tax funds to people just because of their race?”
― Colin M. McGroarty

“Para afrontar la era de la inteligencia artificial con equidad, debemos corregir el hecho de que, en el mundo, el futuro de algunos sea el pasado de otros.”
― F.C. Quiles

“We in America understand the many imperfections of democracy and the malignant disease corroding its very heart. We must be united in the effort to make an America in which our people can find happiness. It is a great wrong that anyone in America, whether he be brown or white, should be illiterate or hungry or miserable.

"We must live in America where there is freedom for all regardless of color, station and beliefs. Great Americans worked with unselfish devotion toward one goal, that is, to use the power of the myriad peoples in the service of America's freedom. They made it their guiding principle. In this we are the same; we must also fight for an America where a man should be given unconditional opportunities to cultivate his potentialities and to restore him to his rightful dignity.

"It is but fair to say that America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea pickers. America is not bound by geographical latitudes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men: of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideals of freemen.

"America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America!”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Whatever our original ancestors—African, Italian, Asian, Indigenous, Latinx—our last name is American. In this country’s dining room, a long table, reaching across thousands of miles, is set for millions of people, made kin by the title of “American.” At the head of this table is our president, who with one exception has always been a White man. All this is brought forth when we speak of a nation.

But what happens when, instead of that meal on that three-thousand-mile-long table—that sustenance, that food for the citizens—many plates remain empty? Or even when those plates are picked up and smashed on the floor? Even for those who carry “American” in their identity? When some of the citizens who sit down at the table—say, we Black citizens—are dragged away from that table by others, usually by White men, because Father is the head of our national family? We must bow to his will.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings – A Personal and Historical Exploration of Black Women's Journeys Through Intersectionality

“Why is belief in standards, and excellence, and stringent qualifications for certain important jobs necessarily right-wing?”
― Lionel Shriver, Mania

“I'm about as fond of communism as I am of that guy in high school who would bum a pen every day, only to need a new one the very next.”
― Criss Jami

“Truth is not always one sided. Two truths can exist at once, standing across from each other without either one being a lie. As spectators we are not always obligated to pick a side. But when we do, we rarely choose based on what is right. We choose based on what makes us feel righteous, or what disturbs us the least. Either way it is the same thing. We are not picking truth. We are picking the version of it that justifies who we already are.”
― Kelly Iyogun

“He turned to me again. "Walt thinks black people are being recognized too much. But white folks have been recognized since the day they were born. We're just getting into this world.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War