Called to the throne by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been: A career open to talent without distinction of birth. It is this system of equality for which the European oligarchy detests me
Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
Logic, too, also rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumption that there areequal things, that the same thing is identical at different points in time: but this science arose as a result of the opposite belief (that such things actually exist in the real world). And it is the same with mathematics, which would certainly never have arisen if it had been understood from the beginning that there is no such thing in nature as a perfectly straight line, a true circle, and absolute measure.
I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions, has added to his fitness for his own work.
I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.