Constitutional Equality Quotes

There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause.

I believe the equal rights amendment is a necessity of life for all citizens. The cabinet sometimes felt that I shouldn't be so outspoken.

When our Founding Fathers wrote the historic words 'all men are created equal,' they probably didn't have people like me in mind.

While men's rights are guaranteed by specific language in the Constitution, women's equal rights aren't mentioned.

The consciences of the American people will not be permitted to slumber until this great constitutional right, the equality of the suffrage, equality of opportunity, freedom of political action and political thought, shall not be the mere cold formalities of constitutional enactment as now, but a living birthright which the poorest and humblest, white or black, native born or naturalized citizen, may confidently enjoy, and which the richest and most powerful dare not deny.

I think the negro (sic) is included in the word “men” used in the Declaration of Independence – I believe the declaration that “all men are created equal” is the great fundamental principal upon which are free institutions rest.

From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

Secularism and the separation of religion from the state are the basic pre-conditions for women’s liberation in the Middle East

The Equal Rights Amendment is a necessity of life…

The Constitution favors no racial group - no political or social group.

I didn't change the Constitution; the equality principle was there from the start. I just was an advocate for seeing its full realization.

The Jews of Banu Awf (non-Muslim minorities) shall be considered a community along with the believers. They shall be guaranteed the right of religious freedom along with the Muslims. The right shall be conferred on their associates as well as themselves except those who are guilty of oppression or the violators of treaties. The Jews of Aws (one of the basic constituent members of this document) and their allies shall possess the same constitutional status as the other parties to this document, with a condition that they should thoroughly sincere and honest in their dealing with the parties.

I liked the name of the amendment. I couldn't help feeling uneasy that the church was opposing something with a name as beautiful as the Equal Rights Amendment.

Muslims of India cannot accept any Constitution which must necessarily result in a Hindu Majority Government.

When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I'd been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality.

I think the negro is included in the word "men" used in the Declaration of Independence.

America, to me, is this enormous contrast between the heady idealism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who said, 'All men are created equal,' and the reality that he was himself a slave owner.

I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality.... In my mind, government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice.

The social degradation of women was a major objective of the feminist movement…. They tell women that in order to be equal they have to be just as promiscuous as men… The Constitution is a beautiful sex neutral document…. The whole idea of feminism is a fraud. As a matter of fact, it is worse than a fraud.

I thought that we would wake up this morning and have the same rights as our husbands, grandsons and garbage men—but we are still begging to be let into our country's Constitution.

The value of "one person, one vote," the value of equality, is a value that was given to us more than 50 years ago as a central part of our constitutional tradition. So, under that principle, we ought to be applying the same standard today that I would have said we should have applied a year ago.

We must make good in essence as well as in form Madison's avowal that "the word slave ought not to appear in the Constitution"; and we must even go further and decree that only local law, and not that time-honored instrument [the Constitution], shall shelter a slave-holder.

The Supreme Court has also issued and never reversed a number of decisions that are repugnant to the Constitution's vision of human dignity and equality.

I'm fed-up with homophobic politicians being called conservative, they are religious radicals hell-bent on imposing their morbid view on everybody. They do not acknowledge that there are non-Christians and atheists in this country who are entitled to Constitutional rights.

I believe all people, regardless of sexual orientation, should be guaranteed the full rights to the legal benefits and responsibilities of marriage under the Constitution.