I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.

In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

States should have the right to enact laws… particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.

I was standing on a ladder outside the Homestead juvenile immigrant detention center outside Miami, looking over the fence, and I saw children lined up like prisoners. They had been separated from their families and put in this private detention facility. It was horrible.

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they’re not discriminated on the job.

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it’s likely to harm them.

I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If I own a large part of Scotland, I can turn the people off the land practically into the sea or across the sea. I can take women in child-bearing and throw them into the snow and leave them there. That has been done. I can do it for no better reason than I think it is better to shoot deer on the land than allow people to live on it.

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‚If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?‘ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‚If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?‘

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn’t have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too.

Rendition is just sending people abroad to be tortured.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it’s again not people who are intrinsically evil.

Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

The West Bank is essentially imprisoned.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti – France and the United States – combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

I have spoken to Chinese leaders occasionally on human rights, but I’ve always done it in private.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‚sophisticated‘ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.

Guantanamo is still open, but it’s unlikely that serious torture is going on at Guantanamo. There is just too much inspection.