What president was quoted as saying " i am not asking for equality because that is imposible, but i'm searchin

Answer 1

Here's the closest I can come to your quote:

"I am not seeking equality of legal rights, nor liberty to do as I wish (although I may want these too), but a condition in which I can feel that I am, because I am taken to be, a responsible agent, whose will is taken into consideration because I am entitled to it, even if I am attacked and persecuted for being what I am or choosing as I do." ~~Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty"

I located the quote in the book, "Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology by Ian Carter, Matthew H. Kramer, and Hillel Steiner.

According to the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy," Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.

The idea of distinguishing between a negative and a positive sense of the term ‘liberty’ goes back at least to Kant, and was examined and defended in depth by Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s and ’60s. Discussions about positive and negative liberty normally take place within the context of political and social philosophy. They are distinct from, though sometimes related to, philosophical discussions about free will. Work on the nature of positive liberty often overlaps, however, with work on the nature of autonomy.

Sir Berlin was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. He was the first president of Wolfson College in Oxford, a school he helped found in 1966. In addition, he was president of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978.

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM (June 6, 1909 – November 5, 1997) was a political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century. Born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first person of Jewish descent to be elected to a prize fellowship at the elite All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was knighted in 1957, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for writings on the theme of individual freedom in society. Berlin's work on liberal theory has had a lasting influence. His 1958 inaugural lecture, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in which he famously distinguished between positive and negative liberty, has informed much of the debate since then on the relationship between liberty and equality.