Human Rights Quotes

All those who prefer peace to power, and happiness to glory should thank the colonized people for their civilizing mission. By liberating themselves, they made Europeans more modest, less racist, and more human. Let us hope that the process continues and that the Americans are obliged to follow the same course. When one’s own cause is unjust, defeat can be liberating.

The massive heart wrenching barbaric violations and battles among the international states or even the Big Powers, megalomania ,‘ folie de grandeur’,and even the UN Peace keeping forces lead us only to understand of the meager contribution to the subject of IHL

Henrietta Newton Martin

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

Martin Luther King Jr.

It [freedom] rings bells to remind humanity that the most precious gifts in life––like children and love and time––must never be taken for granted.

Aberjhani

Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something you had a right to.

You cannot stand for civil rights + not support gay marriage. You cannot stand for human rights + not support gay marriage. It's that simple.Everywhere, the voice of the oppressed must echo + ring out or else it will be crushed by the tyranny of wickedness.

Bernard Schaffer

By contrast, if one conceives the idea of human rights as centring on the notion that each individual is completely autonomous and should have entire control over its own fate, this seems to me unrealistic even for human beings, and far too one-sided to be used as a central tool of morality.

Never think I'm worried about losing sales by speaking out for human rights + gun control. I'd rather be broke than corrupt.

Bernard Schaffer

Freedom rings bells to wake us from the comfort of beautiful dreams and empower the efforts that turn them into reality.

Aberjhani

True unalienable rights do not require one to trample other unalienable rights.

In its essence, Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is one citizen’s soul-searing plea with his countrymen––Whites and Blacks––to recognize that racial disparities fueled by unwarranted bigotry were crippling America’s ability to shine as a true beacon of democracy in a world filled with people groping their way through suffocating shadows of political turmoil, economic oppression, military mayhem, starvation, and disease.

Aberjhani

We must dilute and disperse all forms of concentrated power that refuse to be accountable to majority wishes.

Sexual rights are not only a basic element of human rights but should have an integral part in moves towards Arab reform ...

Ah, my dear friend Hassim, seems our paths cross once again, how fortunate for this humble Sheik.” As Abdullah spoke in his usual self deprecating manner I realized that a favor was on the tip of his tongue and that I was about to be offered a quid-pro-quo.We were sitting crossed legged on large fat pillows with gold fringe. The tent was large with partitions dividing living, sleeping and cooking space. It was made from heavy cotton canvas erected on thick poles in the center giving the structure a peaked circus tent appearance. The women serving us were young, wearing harem pants low on their hips with cropped gauze tops made from sheer silk. Their exposed midriffs were flat and toned, their belly buttons were decorated in precious stones that glittered in the torch light as they moved. They were bare footed with stacks of gold ankle bracelets making the only sound we heard as they kept our glasses filled with fresh sweet tea and our communal serving trays piled high with dates and sugar incrusted sweets of undetermined origin.Abdullah took no notice of these women, his nonchalance intrigued me as I was obviously having trouble keeping my mind focused on the discussion at hand, this was all part of the Arab way, when it came to negotiation they had no peers.“So my dear friend, tell me, the region is on fire is there a solution?”I spoke in a deliberate and flat tone, little emotion just concern, one friend to another.“We were shocked by the American response in Egypt and Libya, never had we seen them move so fast with such efficiency. The fall of Gadaffi was unexpected and Mubarak’s fate stunned us; he had been a staunch supporter of the US in this region we fully expected the Obama administration to prop him up one more time, as they had done so many times in the past.”I looked carefully at Abdullah,

Nick Hahn

Why should the spread of ideas and people result in reforms that lower violence? There are several pathways. The most obvious is a debunking of ignorance and superstition. A connected and educated populace, at least in aggregate and over the long run, is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain. The recent debunking of beliefs that invite or tolerate violence call to mind Voltaire's quip that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right -- it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society.

Pope Benedict XVI

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13).

Shirley Chisholm

The Rights Revolutions too have given us ideals that educated people today take for granted but that are virtually unprecedented in human history, such as that people of all races and creeds have equal rights, that women should be free from all forms of coercion, that children should never, ever be spanked, that students should be protected from bullying, and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I don’t find it at all implausible that these are gifts, in part, of a refined and widening application of reason.

We cordially believe in the rights of property. We think that normally and in the long run the rights of humanity, coincide with the rights of property... But we feel that if in exceptional cases there is any conflict between the rights of property and the rights of man, then we must stand for the rights of man.

Theodore Roosevelt

It’s not our place to judge the guilt or innocence of the prisoners, Nurse Webster. The sooner you learn that the better. Any other approach just leads to conflicts of duty and undermines the smooth running of the institution. We are here to ensure that the prisoners are dealt with firmly and professionally. It’s up to their lawyers to handle matters pertaining to their sentences.

Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls.

I have frequently thought to myself, 'If I can teach my daughter one thing, it will be the love of self unconditionally.' Unconditional love and peace are obtainable, but they are only obtainable if I can learn to move beyond the conditions that I placed on my life. When conditions are placed on my life and on the lives of others, they ensure that I will never experience the depths of love and happiness.

To disrespect a person made in the image and likeness of God is a lot worse than desecrating a flag. We should be offended and repulsed in the same way when God's image bearers are desecrated – abused, beaten, neglected, discriminated against, and not loved and taken care of as they should be.

James MacDonald

May you have the courage to choose love over hate.

Leta B.

If a rare golden heart is sacrificed in the process of trying to research or help many, then the world loses.

Leta B.

Until we align our minds with our souls,we will continue to grieve for our highest selves as individuals, a society, and as a world family.

Leta B.

Prejudice is poison in the veins of the world.

Leta B.

The character of society coincides with how we treat our most vulnerable members of society.

Leta B.

Every precious human being born should have the right to live, love, and maximize his or her potential without suffering from discrimination.

Leta B.

To every person who has never experienced genuine love and kindness, may you still have the strength to find the love and light that exists within your soul to give, thrive, and shine.

Leta B.

I continue to be surprised by judgmental native stereotypes and apathy, but if I wasn't that would mean I'd become accustomed and tolerant. I don't want to stop being surprised. I just want them to stop.

First of all, they came to take the gypsiesand I was happy because they pilfered.Then they came to take the Jews and I said nothing, because they were unpleasant to me.Then they came to take homosexuals,and I was relieved, because they were annoying me.Then they came to take the Communists,and I said nothing because I was not a Communist.One day they came to take me,and there was nobody left to protest.Bertold Brecht, inspired by Emil Gustav Friedrich Martin Niemöller

Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57

Orit Badouk Epstein

The concept of maximum promotion of human rights to the expense of the majority of people in fact undermines the entire concept of the human community.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We can be of many nations, but earth is our land.We can be of many races, but we are just one clan.

We wanted a labour force, but human beings came.

Every child born in the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is this new to him as it was to the first that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.

A human rights activist is the worst type of person to mess with. If I can choose an enemy between the worst finance CEO, or the worst human rights violating dictator, and a human rights activist, I would choose the former. A human rights activist doesn't let go; doesn't have a peace of mind till responsibility for a wrongful act is finally reached. That's the uncomfortable type of person that cannot stand injustice, the type of person that doesn't fear "social desirability" sanctions for confronting wrongdoers directly, upsetting the silence and the status quo, and for screaming loud. That's the person that dares to stand up -- for themselves, for others. That's the type of person who doesn't lay low, doesn't fear being perceived as uncomfortable, the type of person that doesn't just "go along". I do not want as an enemy a person who cannot let go and forget injustice, but who instead will plug away till the very end, till justice is reached. I do not want that man or woman as an enemy.

Often, then, the stories came pouring out, and often they were set before us slowly and quietly like tea. These slow stories were told with understatement that made my eyes and voice fill as I translated; for when people seem to have no emotion remaining for such stories, your own heart must supply it.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

Thomas Jefferson

The question, he (Lincoln) said over and over, is not what a man's particular abilities may be, but what his rights are as a human being made in God's image.

Elton Trueblood

The Constitution only guarantees the Nigerian people the human rights either in their preamble or substantive provisions in the country.

rights are honored only in the breach. most people don't get agents or cops assigned to them until they're already raped or dead.

Patricia Cornwell

How then can the US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation. Everyone and everything in the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance and intervention, often violently through direct military means or through proxies.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Today we are less likely to speak of humanitarianism, with its overtones of paternalistic generosity, and more likely to speak of human rights. The basic freedoms in life are not seen as gifts to be doled out by benevolent well-wishers, but as Casement said at his trial, as those rights to which all human beings are entitled from birth. It is this spirit which underlies organizations like Amnesty International, with its belief that putting someone in prison solely for his or her opinion is a crime, whether it happens in China or Turkey or Argentina and Medecins Sans Frontieres, with its belief that a sick child is entitled to medical care, whether in Rwanda or Honduras or the South Bronx.

Adam Hochschild

Ponzi schemes don’t trickle down, they siphon up.

We’re currently faced with two entirely different challenges – facing down Islamism and jihadism on the one hand, and advancing human rights and democratic culture on the other.

A voteless people is a hopeless people.

Amelia Boynton Robinson

Americans care more about the rights of animals than about what happens to us!

Joe Sacco

More than that, in the five hundred years of European OCCUPATION, Native cultures have already driven themselves to be remarkably tenacious and resilient.

Every attempt through history to limit the definition of humanity has been a prelude to the subjugation, degradation, and slaughter of innocents.

Whoever coined the phrase '"I can work well under pressure" should be put on trial for crimes against Humanity.

You don't have to stand up for your rights to get justice, sometimes you can sit for your rights like Rosa Parks.

The simple truth is that every human being should be born with basic human rights without suffering from discrimination.

Leta B.

The irony of the present day is, the more human rights jurisprudence seems to be fortified, the more there are human rights violations in newer and newer forms and some recidivism all due to the conflicting deductions of protecting even human rights of offenders. No doubts offenders deserve their rights to be protected but in cases of serious offenses such as ‘rape’ where the offender consciously commits the act while being aware of the justice system in his particular country, prefers to cross the precincts of the law. Worst still, is increasing crime rate of offenses such as rape committed against children and infants.

Henrietta Newton Martin

Do the words 'human rights' even exist in this country anymore?

Thus there is a need for analogical process of deduction of laws and rules in the decision making process by the UN at this juncture, where the world is facing innumerable human rights violation (reported and unreported) pretermitting antithetical implementation of what each nation or any disputing party understands, in its own misinterpreted version of international laws. There is a need for world comity.

Henrietta Newton Martin

..Thus it can be said that ‘Human Rights’ is an ever expanding subject, which grows in leaps and bounds with the evolution of knowledge, development of the society and the advancement of the world at large, thereby encompassing within its ambit newer forms of right/s as and when recognized as an inalienable ‘right’ , along with wrapped-in duties; duties, on the part of the state, the government, the human rights organizations on one hand, and duties incumbent on individuals as responsible beings owing their allegiance to the society, the society itself , and the world at large on the other...

Henrietta Newton Martin

It must be instilled in man that ‘peace’ is the best legacy we would leave behind for the generations to come, as we practice and follow the edicts of human rights.

Henrietta Newton Martin

The irony of the present day is, that, the more human rights jurisprudence seems to be fortified, the more there are human rights violations in newer and newer forms and some recidivism all due to the conflicting deductions of protecting even human rights of offenders. No doubt offenders deserve their rights to be protected, but in cases of serious offenses such as ‘rape’ where the offence is proved beyond all reasonable doubt against the offender and where the offender consciously commits the act while being aware of the justice system in his particular country and prefers to cross the precincts of the law, the question of a lighter punishment vis-a vis the gravity of the offence is a big question.

Henrietta Newton Martin

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