Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.

But there is no obvious reason for holding that some normal adults are entitled to make choices for other normal adults, as paternalists of both left and right believe.

Libertarians typically argue that particular obligations, at least under normal circumstances, must be created by consent; they cannot be unilaterally imposed by others.

Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.

Libertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good.

Obviously, all of us have been influenced by those around us.

Obligations may be universal or particular.

It is obvious that different individuals require different things to live good, healthy, and virtuous lives.

The government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket.

Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.

Most Europeans have no idea how wild life can be in north America.

What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.

To repeat, communitarians maintain that we are constituted as persons by our particular obligations, and therefore those obligations cannot be a matter of choice.

It is precisely because neither individuals nor small groups can be fully self-sufficient that cooperation is necessary to human survival and flourishing.

The reason the government sells the census as your ticket to getting goodies - rather than as your civic duty - is that distributing goodies is now all the government does.

The first census in 1790 asked just six questions: the name of the head of the household, the number of free white males older than 16, the number of free white males younger than 16, the number of free white females, the number of other free persons, and the number of slaves.

If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?

Guardians are necessary for children and abnormal adults, because they cannot make responsible choices for themselves.

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

Libertarians recognize the difference between adults and children, as well as differences between normal adults and adults who are insane or mentally hindered or retarded.

Group personification obscures, rather than illuminates, important political questions.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.

All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

In a society in which equality is a fact, not merely a word, words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables.

Nobody really believes in equality anyway.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

There will always be a place for us somewhere, somehow, as long as we see to it that working people fight for everything they have, everything they hope to get, for dignity, equality, democracy, to oppose war and to bring to the world a better life.

Demands for equality for women are threats to men's self-esteem and sense of sexual turf.

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.

The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

What is being called the UN 'gender architecture' is more like a shack. Women need a bigger global house if equality is ever to become a reality.

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

The focus of tolerance education is to deal with the concept of equality and fairness. We need to establish confidence with children that there is more goodness than horror in this world.

Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.

It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

The civil rights movement in the United States was about the same thing, about equality of treatment for all sections of the people, and that is precisely what our movement was about.

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

Friendship is something that creates equality and mutuality, not a reward for finding equality or a way of intensifying existing mutuality.