Human Rights Quotes

“Hay criminales que proclaman tan campantes ‘la maté porque era mía’, así no más, como si fuera cosa de sentido común y justo de toda justicia y derecho de propiedad privada, que hace al hombre dueño de la mujer. Pero ninguno, ninguno, ni el más macho de los supermachos tiene la valentía de confesar ‘la maté por miedo’, porque al fin y al cabo el miedo de la mujer a la violencia del hombre es el espejo del miedo del hombre a la mujer sin miedo.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and—most unforgivably—increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault.”
― Norman G. Finkelstein, Goldstone Recants: Richard Goldstone Renews Israel's License to Kill

“It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right.”
― Teri Reynolds, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“No matter how pathetic or pitiful, every human is fated to have one moment in their lives in which they can change their own destiny.”
― Takayuki Yamaguchi, Shigurui 11

“You can't have occupation and human rights.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
― George F. Kennan

“If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impassable with our bodies the corridors to the gas chamber. For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
― James Baldwin

“The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.”
― Adam Michnik

“...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.”
― Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry

“Let’s stand against the killing of innocent civilians. It is time to make the future better than today. Together we can bring peace and unity to our communities.”
― Widad Akreyi

“Turn the cell into a classroom and the prison into a university”
― Khalil Osiris

“Women in my country take their rights for granted and completely dissociate themselves from the women's rights movement and feminism. But I think anything's possible. If I don't help the women in Afghanistan, they won't be around to help me.”
― Cheryl Benard quoting Lorrie

“Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I now want to examine a second major feature of Western civilization that derives from Christianity. This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the 'affirmation of ordinary life.' It is the simple idea that ordinary people are fallible, and yet these fallible people matter. In this view, society should organize itself in order to meet their everyday concerns, which are elevated into a kind of spiritual framework. The nuclear family, the idea of limited government, the Western concept of the rule of law, and our culture's high emphasis on the relief of suffering all derive from this basic Christian understanding of the dignity of fallible human beings.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity

“Dieting was cruel; it was an abuse of human rights. Yes, that's what it was, and she should not allow herself to be manipulated in this way. She stopped herself. Thinking like that was nothing more than coming up with excuses for breaking the diet. Mma Ramotswe was made of sterner stuff than that, and so she persisted.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Blue Shoes and Happiness

“Nothing looks the same after a trip to the Congo. The world back home no longer makes sense. It is difficult to reconcile how it even inhabits the same planet. Neatly arranged mountains of vegetables at grocery stores seem vulgar. Bright lights and flushing toilets seem like sorcery. Clean air and water feel like a crime. The markers of wealth and consumption appear violent.”
― Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

“It is time to recognize the past and ongoing genocides to prevent new ones. Together we can build a better world!”
― Widad Akreyi

“In the absence of strong political movements for human rights, the active process of bearing witness inevitably gives way to the active process of forgetting. Repression, dissociation, and denial are phenomena of social as well as individual consciousness.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“When they challenge the innocent morality of the rights regime, anthropologists join a number of political and legal theorists who have asked whether humanitarianism is the new face of colonialism. Some have pointed out the paradoxes of rights-based arguments: that they allow people to make claims, but lock them into fixed identities defined by their injuries rather than freeing them from these identities into a world of equals; or they absolve the perpetrators of past violence by making them the defenders of rights.”
― Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

“Right to peace stands on the pillars of freedom of expression, respect for human rights, cultural diversity and scientific cooperation. Right to peace transform culture of war to a culture of peace. It is also saving humanity from the dangers of dark democracy, which exploits innocent citizens by implementing wrong law, purchased press and digital surveillance.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“Peygamber dedi: 'Kadın akıllılara ve gönül sahiplerine tam galip gelir. Cahillerse kadına üstün olur, çünkü onlar sert ve serkeş davranır.' İncelik, letafet ve insaf onlarda az bulunur, çünkü tabiatlarında hayvanlık galiptir. Sevgi ve incelik, insanlık vasfıdır. Öfke ve şehvet, hayvanlık vasfıdır. O, Hakk'ın ışığıdır; sevgili değil. O, sanki yaratıcıdır; yaratılmış değildir.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Masnavi I Ma'navi

“We huddle tightly together as cowards, protecting the ranks of our false collective identity from "less-human" intruders, when the only obvious and sane truth is that we are all the same human beings.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“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

“Human rights violations are nit accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect. Rights violations are, rather, symptoms of deeper pathologies of power and are linked intimately to the social conditions that so often determine who will suffer abuse and who will be shielded from harm.”
― Paul Farmer

“A man is only noble when he has pity on all living creatures.”
-Shenita Etwaroo”
― Shenita Etwaroo

“I hated this new breed of pacifist Indian revolutionary. So often they acted like we were all just good friends who happened to disagree about something, and that once the issue was resolved – obviously in their favour – we’d go back to taking tea and being the best of chums. It made punching them in the face morally difficult.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“Happy belated 4th of July to the Americans July 2, 1776, was meant for. Not the American's; some of whom's ancestors fought for the British against a nation that DIDN'T then, COULDN'T after The Emancipation Proclamation, and still CAN'T seem to recognize our basic human rights.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“Cobalt mining is the slave farm perfected. The cost of labor has been nullified through the degradation of Africans at the bottom of an economic chain that purports to exonerate all participants of accountability through a shrewd scheme of obfuscation adorned with hypocritical proclamations about the preservation of human rights. It is a system of absolute exploitation for absolute profit. Cobalt mining is the latest in a long history of “enormous and atrocious” lies that have tormented the people of the Congo.”
― Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

“If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those ideas have to be poisoned. That requires not just surveillance, and not merely a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan, a narrative that damages the idea of democracy, wherever it is being used, anywhere in the world.”
― Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.