#r

In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#culture #equality #guilt #refinement #rich

In a culture of diversity, one group is likely not "just like everyone else." To deny that we have different needs, concerns, thought processes, worldview, is to refuse to look at the reason we are supposedly an identifiable community. ↗

— Anthony D. Ravenscroft

#equality #relationships #equality

Nothing helped until the day she took a tablet and pencil into the basement and moved the event out of her and onto paper, where it was reshaped into a kind of simple equation: loss equaled the need to love again, more. ↗

— Elizabeth Berg

#love #writing #equality

We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#individuality #intelligence #objectivism #schooling #students

So how’s it going?” “Okay. Glad to be home, I guess. Gus told me you were in the ICU?” “Yeah,” I said. “Sucks,” he said. “I’m a lot better now,” I said. “I’m going to Amsterdam tomorrow with Gus.” “I know. I’m pretty well up-to-date on your life, because Gus never. Talks. About. Anything. Else. ↗

— John Green

#dating

The fact that the Constitution is sufficiently open-ended to infuriate all Americans almost equally is part of its enduring genius. ↗

— Dahlia Lithwick

#jurisprudence #slate #equality

Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character. ↗

— Truman Capote

#travel #equality

He is quiet and small, he is black From his ears to the tip of his tail; He can creep through the tiniest crack He can walk on the narrowest rail. He can pick any card from a pack, He is equally cunning with dice; He is always deceiving you into believing That he's only hunting for mice. He can play any trick with a cork Or a spoon and a bit of fish-paste; If you look for a knife or a fork And you think it is merely misplaced - You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn! But you'll find it next week lying out on the lawn. And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there ever A Cat so clever As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees! ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#conjurer #magician #mephisto #mr-mistoffelees #equality

...if you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that woman are inferior, you haven't made any progress. ↗

— Ariel Levy

#feminism #patriarchy #equality

I guess they'll find out that freedom doesn't keep you warm, ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#freedom