A Quote by Friedrich August von Hayek

It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Quote Topics

Alike Before Demand Different Equality Essence Fact Law People Should Spite Treated

Quote Author

Friedrich August von Hayek
Austrian - Economist
May 8, 1899 - March 23, 1992

To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assumption that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequality would justify unequal treatment, and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.

Friedrich August von Hayek

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.

Friedrich August von Hayek

For what people have always sought is equality before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is no such thing as equality, other than of opportunity and before the law. But there is no equality of what's gonna happen to you when you engage or pursue your opportunity, and there's no guarantee that's what's gonna happen to you once you have your equality before the law. There is no equality of outcome.

Rush Limbaugh

One of the challenges that happened in Europe is that in accepting many Muslim people they didn't explain to them that those countries have particular values like equality of all people before the law. Islam does not accept people are equal before the law.

Mark Durie

The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.

Robert Bork

Equality is the heart and essence of democracy, freedom, and justice, equality of opportunity in industry, in labor unions, schools and colleges, government, politics, and before the law. There must be no dual standards of justice, no dual rights, privileges, duties, or responsibilities of citizenship. No dual forms of freedom.

A. Philip Randolph

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man - in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.

Frank Chodorov

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

While the law cannot force a person to be moral or tolerant, through the law we can demand respect and expect equality.

Donna Brazile

The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is - a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law.

Bruce Springsteen

No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view.

George Orwell

I don’t hold with equality in all things only with equality before the law and nothing more.

Thaddeus Stevens

Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, "equality" is a disaster.

Robert A. Heinlein

The further left you are, the more your concern for the underdog crowds out everything else, leading you to overlook inconsistencies. You might, for example, argue for immigration and multiculturalism in the UK, but not in the Amazon. You might demand equality before the law and, at the same time, gender quotas.