The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.

The French love equality, they care little for liberty.

BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON, quoted in LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XXIV

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

The critics are right when they say that under free enterprise goods are not equally distributed among the populace. Where there is private property, not everyone has the same amount of property. If such equality could exist, it would depend upon distributing everything equally and then stopping all transactions or change at that point. It would have to mean, also, the stopping of all births and deaths, for as soon as an imbalance between births and deaths occurred, a new inequality would either exist or an entire redistribution have to take place.

In no extensive society has there ever been equality of possessions...Give two small children each a toy. One will have his torn up within the hour, while the other may keep his in good repair for months or years. It is so for adults as well; some manage well, work hard, take care of what they have received, others hardly at all. The basic question for an economy and society is not one of the disparity of wealth but of the justice of the arrangement under which it is acquired and maintained.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.

Nature seems to work through diversity rather than through uniformity, indeed through inequality rather than equality...It seems to be nature’s theory that mankind, the human race as a whole, will be better served by diversities. than by uniformity and equality.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter III, The Problem of Rights Continued

It is not inequality of natural powers of body or mind, nor inequality in natural conditions, that excites...resentment...The man of feeble natural powers may envy him of strong natural powers, but he can see that society, that law, is not responsible for that inequality...It is not essential to the preservation of society and the race that such inequalities should be removed, that all men should be reduced to a dead level of capacity, that human nature should be ignored. It is strongly felt, however, that society should not itself create artificial inequalities...The intensity of this feeling against artificial inequalities is so great that men sometimes prefer equality before the law even to liberty.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter IV, Justice the Equilibrium

He does...feel resentment if restraints are imposed upon him in his pursuit of happiness which are not imposed upon others in their pursuit. Similarly he feels resentment if exemptions from restraint are allowed some others and not allowed him also. Furthermore, he is quick to note any discrimination against himself and prone to imagine it when in fact there is none.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter IV, Justice the Equilibrium

[J]ustice is the according to every one his right, and that right is such freedom of action in gratifying one’s desires as can be exercised in harmony with like freedom by others. In other words, it is equal freedom, equal restraint.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter IV, Justice the Equilibrium

A society that puts equality...ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

The fact that opportunities open to the poor in a competitive society are much more restricted than those open to the rich does not make it less true that in such a society the poor are much more free than a person commanding much greater material comfort in a different type of society.

There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality – an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

Freedom is a practical ideal - equality is not; for men can make themselves free, but they cannot make themselves equal.

HIRST, FRANCIS W., Liberty and Tyranny

[T]hough it has gone far to deprive its subjects of liberty and property, the Soviet Dictatorship has failed to equalize their incomes.

The rigid theory of equality...has been, perhaps, since the Terror, the most formidable foe of civilization....This theory...was described by Acton as ‘the most dangerous enemy lurking in our path.’

Political equality is conceded to all, and hence arises the erroneous notion of absolute equality. Because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal. When this false and absurd doctrine becomes prevalent, there is sure to be trouble...When the finances become embarrassed, the idea of equality readily lends itself to a confiscation of private property as a method of relieving the mass of poverty. Confidence is destroyed; things grow worse, until perhaps some demagogue, popular either as a military hero or as a mob orator, gets himself proclaimed tyrant.

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

No economic equality can survive the working of biological inequality. This is a hard commonplace truth, disappointing as it may be to those who ride upon plans of Utopia.

It seems...inadvisable to adopt systems which although they promise equality in distribution fail to produce the commodities to distribute.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

[C]ivilized society requires orders and classes.... If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

Equality of itself, without many other elements, has no intrinsic connexion with liberty. All may be equally degraded, equally slavish, or equally tyrannical. Equality is one of the pervading features of Eastern despotism.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter II

Diversity is the law of life; absolute equality is that of stagnation and death.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter II

There have always been people in this country that love government more than freedom. They believe that the government should equalize economic outcomes rather than provide a climate for equality of opportunity.

If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet, striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality.

The motives, which at present impel mankind to the labor and pain which produce the resuscitation of wealth in ever-increasing quantities, are such as infallibly to entail inequality in the distribution of wealth.

Mr. Labouchere’s language...like that of many persons who agree with him in the belief that government can indefinitely increase human happiness, undoubtedly suggests the opinion, that the stock of good things in the world is practically unlimited in quantity, that it is (so to speak) contained in a vast storehouse or granary, and that out of this it is now doled in unequal shares and unfair proportions. It is this unfairness and inequality which democratic law will some day correct. Yet nothing is more certain, than that the mental picture which enchains enthusiasts for benevolent democratic government is altogether false, and that, if the mass of mankind were to make an attempt at redividing the common stock of things, they would resemble, not a number of claimants insisting on the fair division of a fund, but a mutinous crew, feasting on a ship’s provisions, gorging themselves on the meat and intoxicating themselves with the liquors, but refusing to navigate the vessel to port. It is among the simplest of economical truths, that far the largest part of the wealth of the world is constantly perishing by consumption, and that, if it be not renewed by perpetual toil and adventure, either the human race, or the particular community making the experiment of resting without being thankful, will be extinguished or brought to the very verge of extinction.

Charles Murray, in his 1984 book on the failure of poverty programs...tried to calculate the grand total of all types of government spending intended to relieve and/or eliminate poverty...That’s $3,800,000,000,000 - enough to giver every poor person in America $117,000 to start his own war on poverty. And the spending of this truly vast amount of money...has left everybody just sitting around slack jawed and dumbstruck, staring into the maw of that most extraordinary paradox: You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money."

O’ROURKE, P.J., Parliament of Whores

[N]o society can be simultaneously fair, free and equal. If it is fair, people who work harder will accumulate more. If it is free, people will give their wealth to their children. But then it cannot be equal, for some people will inherit wealth they did not earn. Ever since Plato called attention to these tradeoffs in 'The Republic', most political ideologies can be defined by the stance they take on which of these ideals should yield.

The motive [of egalitarianism] is not the desire to help the poor, but to destroy the competent. The motive is hatred of the good for being the good -- a hatred focused specifically on the fountainhead of all goods, spiritual or material; the men of ability.

Some people would oppose the program [school choice] on the grounds that it will foster the development of different educational theories and methods in the various private schools. The answer to them is that precisely is one of the program’s goals - that differences, not regimented uniformity, are essential to the progress of a free country - and that equality before the law, not egalitarianism, is one of this country’s fundamental principles.

Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results.