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It is not until a community or an individual has advanced a fair distance along the path of civilisation and shows by its laws its elimination of many of its most mischievous dispositions — notably sadism — that it can bear to admit the equality of women.

— Rebecca West Woman as Artist and Thinker (1931)

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More quotes by Rebecca West

Art is at least in part a way of collecting information about the universe.

I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.

Socialism is not a bomb thrown at the natural institution of society, but a well-considered medicine for a diseased community.

The word “idiot” comes from a Greek root meaning private person.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)

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Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

Mikhail Bakunin The Red Association (1870)

The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.

Milton Friedman

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

Felix Frankfurter

It is not true that equality is a law of nature. nature has made nothing equal, her sovereign law is subordination and dependence.

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues Reflections and Maxims (1746)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rebecca West (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.