Egalitarianism Quotes

• Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Real, Sacrifice, Equality

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• The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens.

  Camille Paglia

  Beautiful, Block, Equality

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• As the egalitarianism of Marxism is attractive to many, socialism could have attracted many followers in America, anyway. But there is no doubt that it could not possibly have affected us so widely and so deeply as it has, had it not been heavily financed.

  B. Carroll Reece

  America, Doubt, Followers

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• The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

  Aristotle

  Philosophical, Equality, Deep Thought

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• Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property.

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  Ideas, Shapes, Form

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe (2011). “DemocracyThe God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order”, p.217, Transaction Publishers

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• I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice.

  Bill Ayers

  War, White, Justice

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Bill Ayers". Interview with Rachel DeWoskin, therumpus.net. December 1, 2013.

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• An egalitarian educational system is necessarily opposed to meritocracy and reward for achievement. It is inevitably opposed to procedures that might reveal differing levels of achievement.

  Robert Bork

  Educational, Achievement, Levels

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• Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.

  Clay Shirky

  Moving, Past, Size

  Clay Shirky (2008). “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations”, p.63, Penguin

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• The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.

  Ayn Rand

  Strong, Men, Pyramids

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.152, Penguin

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• A good education would be devoted to encouraging and refining the love of the beautiful, but a pathologically misguided moralism instead turns such longing into a sin against the high goal of making everyone feel good, of overcoming nature in the name of equality. ... Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism.

  Allan Bloom

  Beautiful, Sacrifice, Names

  Allan David Bloom (1993). “Love and Friendship”

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• In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity of local differences, and respect. Respect, I think, always implies imagination - the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls.

  Wendell Berry

  Thinking, Differences, Order

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.181, Counterpoint

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• The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Equality, Imagination, Principles

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1847). “Democracy in America”

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• This is the deal: we are happy to single out people as superior just as long as they don't accept the description themselves. We want heroes and idols but we also want egalitarianism and that requires proclamations of humility from our Gods.

  Julian Baggini

  Hero, Humility, Idols

  "'I feel so humble' - the common cry of heroes and villains" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. May 18, 2013.

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• The economic egalitarianism of the liberal ideology implies ... the reduction of Westerners to hunger and poverty.

  James Burnham

  Hunger And Poverty, Economic, Reduction

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• There are also two Christianities in the world today. There is (1) the Christianity of the New Testament, and there is (2) the Christianity of accommodation to modernism, egalitarianism, niceness, naturalism, pop psychology, secular humanism, relativism, subjectivism, individualism, "Enlightenment" rationalism or postmodern irrationalism. New converts to the first Christianity are constantly amazed and scandalized by finding many of their clergy to be in love with the second and in fear of the first.

  Peter Kreeft

  Two, Psychology, Enlightenment

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• The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to collectivists, to people who believe that wealth is best obtained by redistribution, and that message is clear and concise . . . Egalitarianism is sinful; it's also cowardly.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Believe, People, Messages

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• It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

  Henry Miller

  Unique, Vices, Levels

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.49, New Directions Publishing

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• Did Romeo and Juliet have a ... "relationship"? The term "relationship" ... betokens a chaste egalitarianism leveling different ranks and degrees of attachment.

  Allan Bloom

  Attachment, Degrees, Different

  Allan David Bloom (1993). “Love and Friendship”

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• Socialism is not spontaneous. It does not arise of itself. It has abiding principles according to which the major means of production and distribution ought to be socialised if exploitation of the many by the few is to be prevented; if, that is to say, egalitarianism in the economy is to be protected.

  Kwame Nkrumah

  Mean, Principles, Abiding

  Kwame Nkrumah (1966). “Two myths”

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• Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing.

  Leonard Read

  Labels, Nazism, Different

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• Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

  Brian Cox

  Fall, Theatre, Cinema

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Equality, Political

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 7 Apr. 1776)

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• Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact - in defiance of facts. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top - the aristocracy of non-value.

  Ayn Rand

  Equality, Men, Law

  Ayn Rand (1999). “The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, p.119, Penguin

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• The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Believe, Men, Order

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1847). “Democracy in America”

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• Passion for equality blinds the utopian to the fact that society, as a whole, is based on inequality of men in two respects: the inventor, the innovator, the exceptional man creates something new and insures continuous progress; the others emulate his work or merely improve their own lot by benefiting from his creativity.

  Thomas Steven Molnar

  Passion, Creativity, Men

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