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“Charity is today a 'political charity.'. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production.”
― Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation

“They are also difficult to reconcile with archaeological evidence of how cities actually began in many parts of the world: as civic experiments on a grand scale, which frequently lacked the expected features of administrative hierarchy and authoritarian rule. We do not possess an adequate terminology for these early cities. To call them ‘egalitarianâ€�, as we’ve seen, could mean quite a number of different things. It might imply an urban parliament and co-ordinated projects of social housing, as with some pre-Columbian centres in the Americas; or the self-organizing of autonomous households into neighbourhoods and citizensâ€� assemblies, as with prehistoric mega-sites north of the Black Sea; or, perhaps, the introduction of some explicit notion of equality based on principles of uniformity and sameness, as in Uruk-period Mesopotamia.

None of this variability is surprising once we recall what preceded cities in each region. That was not, in fact, rudimentary or isolated groups, but far-flung networks of societies, spanning diverse ecologies, with people, plants, animals, drugs, objects of value, songs and ideas moving between them in endlessly intricate ways. While the individual units were demographically small, especially at certain times of year, they were typically organized into loose coalitions or confederacies. At the very least, these were simply the logical outcome of our first freedom: to move away from one’s home, knowing one will be received and cared for, even valued, in some distant place. At most they were examples of ‘amphictyonyâ€�, in which some kind of formal organization was put in charge of the care and maintenance of sacred places. It seems that Marcel Mauss had a point when he argued that we should reserve the term ‘civilizationâ€� for great hospitality zones such as these. Of course, we are used to thinking of ‘civilizationâ€� as something that originates in cities â€� but, armed with new knowledge, it seems more realistic to put things the other way round and to imagine the first cities as one of those great regional confederacies, compressed into a small space.”
― David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

“Fürst! Was Sie sind, sind Sie durch Zufall und Geburt, was ich bin, bin ich durch mich. Fürsten hat es und wird es noch Tausende geben, Beethoven gibt es nur einen.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we compare Islam at the time of its advent with the societies that surrounded it—the stratified feudalism of Iran and the caste system of India to the east, the privileged aristocracies of both Byzantine and Latin Europe to the west—the Islamic dispensation does indeed bring a message of equality. Not only does Islam not endorse such systems of social differentiation; it explicitly and resolutely rejects them. The actions and utterances of the Prophet, the honored precedents of the early rulers of Islam as preserved by tradition, are overwhelmingly against privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race, and insist that rank and honor are determined only by piety and merit in Islam.”
― Bernard Lewis

“You are earth; he whom you tread upon is no less, and he that treads upon you is no more.”
― John Donne, The Showing Forth of Christ: Sermons of John Dunne

“Clouds are the most egalitarian of nature's displays, since each one of us has a good view of them, so it really doesn't matter where you are.”
― Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter's Guide

“Nature gave the same form to all
And warms each one with the same heat
Using reason, we follow her inclination
To give equal opportunity to our fellow humans
Who are our brothers.

None should seek felicity
To the detriment of his neighbor.
Depriving oneself of a pleasure to offer it to others
Is the sign of a noble heart
And the expression of wisdom.

Thus nature and reason go hand in hand
And ask us to help one another
For the good of all and by common agreement
We share
In the feast of life.”
― Roxanne Moreil, L'âge d'or. Volume 1

“Hunter-gatherer societies have typically been egalitarian, as we'll soon see, throughout hominin history. Inequality emerged when stuff, things to possess and accumulate, was invented following animal domestication and the development of agriculture. The more stuff, reflecting surplus, job specialization, and technological sophistication, the greater the potential inequality. Moreover, inequality expands enormously when cultures invent inheritance within families. Once invented, inequality became pervasive. Among traditional pastoralists or small-scale agricultural societies, levels of wealth inequality match or exceed those in the most unequal industrialized societies. Why have stratified cultures dominated the planet, generally replacing more egalitarian ones? For population biologist Peter Turchin, the answer is that stratified cultures are ideally suited to being conquerors. They come with chains of command. Both empirical and theoretical work suggest that in addition, in unstable environments, stratified societies are better able to survive resource shortages than egalitarian cultures by sequestering mortality to the lower classes. In other words, when times are tough, the unequal access to wealth becomes the unequal distribution of misery and death.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“The act of our creation is equal for all of us. The results of our creation are not. The goal of our Founding Fathers was to treat everyone equally under the law, and as such, provide for equality of opportunity, not results.”
― A.E. Samaan

“To limit the ways our daughters can legitimately function as stewards/rulers further devalues the image of God in them and continues the imbalance and distortion of God's plan.”
― Lisa Graham McMinn

“The act of our creation is equal for all of us. The results are not. The goal of our Foundation is to treat everyone equally under the law.”
― A.E. Samaan

“The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail,â€� warned Schumpeter, who added that the middle class is “rationalist and unheroic.â€� In fact, middle class man “can only use rationalist and unheroic means to defend his position or to bend a nation to his will.â€� These are disturbing words for Americans, who are egalitarians to the core. The notion that “all men are created equalâ€� is branded into our consciousness. But let us be honest for a moment. Men are hardly created equal in reality. If you factored in education and training, men would not long remain equal even if they were created so. Some are naturally gifted from childhood. Some benefit from hard training and long study. It used to be that aristocracy, under the best circumstances, was a training in
leadership that would begin at infancy. What we are now left to is the training of opportunists by state functionaries.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“Raise your head now or your children will live with their heads down for the rest of their life.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Monk Meets World

“Do you know who is a human? Every creature that doesn't walk away at the sight of injustice, is a human. Every creature that doesn’t look the other way, when faced with corruption, is a human. Every creature that doesn’t turn a deaf ear to discrimination, is a human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Operation Justice: To Make A Society That Needs No Law

“A human without a strong sense of justice, is no human - a human without a strong sense of acceptance, is no human - a human without a strong sense of egalitarianism, is no human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Operation Justice: To Make A Society That Needs No Law

“Tolerate no discrimination and moderate no compassion.”
― Abhijit Naskar, See No Gender

“The people of Aveyon need egalitarian reforms before I get around to the library."
Marguerite snapped a book shut and returned it to the shelf. "What could be more egalitarian than access to literature for all people of Aveyon?”
― Emma Theriault, Rebel Rose

“Just A Human Sonnet

Emotion first,
Attire later.
Simplicity first,
Sovereignty later.
Friendship first,
Faith later.
Goodness first,
God later.
Morality first,
Nationality later.
Peace first,
Patriotism later.
Let nothing be a hindrance to humanity,
Fulfilment of life lies in universality.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live

“I am the seed of all assimilation, the first one standing, earthquakin' egalitarian.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live

“Even at his age he knew that there are basically two categories of people in a society: those who have, and those who have not. But according to the egalitarian principles of any communist society, those 'haves' should share with the 'have nots.' And because there is not much to share anyway, in the end that egalitarianism boils down to the equal distribution of poverty.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Café Europa: Life After Communism

“Patriarchy believes emotion is weak and has no place in business or governance. It means leaving pieces of you behind when you sit at the table. It means that if you want to be part of the winning side, you have to comply and be ready to be part of the team without holding them back.

Matriarchal and egalitarian systems promote love-based decision-making and space for people to share their emotions.”
― Elaine Alec, Calling My Spirit Back

“Giants in Jeans Sonnet 15

I am the craftsman,
I am the craft.
I am the artist,
I am the art.
I am the infinity,
I am absolution.
I am impossibility,
I am the solution.
I am the just,
As well as justice.
I am equality,
As well as its means.
There's always a way, so long as I exist,
And I exist wherever there's a Universalist.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“The next revolution won’t be about the hydrogen molecule at the leading edge of the wave that shouts, ‘that’s right everybody follow me!â€� It will be about the groundswell that caused the wave to begin with.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause