Victor Cousin Quotes

God allows unjust disparities between rich and poor because He does not miraculously intervene to establish justice against human wills. Also, discrepancies are not unjust by themselves; justice does not mean equality of result but equality of opportunity.

It's not enough to have economic growth. You have to distribute wealth throughout all of society.

Fairness is not about statistical equality.

I stand for the square deal.... I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and reward.

Liberty … is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone.

We hold the view that all men are created equal." Now, what did they mean by that? Did they mean, my friends, to say that all men were created equal and that that meant that any one man was born to inherit $10 billion and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing? Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than it and all of its children and children's children could every dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation?

Liberty: Give to every man the fruit of his own labor -- the labor of his hands and of his brain.

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

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.

If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness.

What does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?

We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought.

Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself.

All these people who think they deserve free health care, or a job, or a plasma screen TV, simply because they radiate heat at 98.6 degrees, or because they were born in a certain place, or because they have a certain skin color - it's all bunk. There's no such thing as a 'just' wage. There's only what you earn.

Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.

It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty, and intelligence.

Absolute justice demands that mens incomes and rewards should ... vary, and that some have more than others-so long as human justice is upheld by the provision of equal opportunity for all.

The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well.

The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.

Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.

What those people who ask for equality have in mind is always an increase in their own power to consume.

Imagine if your success in life is determined only by your guts, your hard work, and your willpower, and not by the wealth of your parents. I think it'll be a much more interesting world. I think this could change the way the planet is run.

No less characteristic in a democracy is social justice. This demands a solution to the frightening indexes of infant mortality, of malnutrition, lack of education illiteracy, wages not sufficient to sustain life