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.

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

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

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

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.

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

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

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.

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who’s spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

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

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

The conditions were terrible. The farmworkers were only earning about 70 cents an hour at that time – 90 cents was the highest wage that they were earning. They didn’t have toilets in the fields; they didn’t have cold drinking water. They didn’t have rest periods. People worked from sunup to sundown. It was really atrocious.

Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear.

One of the most interesting reactions to come out of 1968 was in the first publication of the Trilateral Commission, which believed there was a ‚crisis of democracy‘ from too much participation of the masses.

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

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

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.

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It’s when you go backwards through the ‚begats‘ and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, ‚Hang on, that’s a big punishment for eating one lousy apple… There’s a human-rights issue.‘

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Rendition is just sending people abroad to be tortured.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

The West Bank is essentially imprisoned.

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.

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.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.

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

DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they’ve ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.

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

I lived in a dictatorship in Brazil, and I was arrested three times. I felt in my flesh what it is to live under such a regime and experience deprivation of freedom.

In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, ’69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it’s worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started – an outright war started in 1962.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

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

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

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

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.

After May 1940, the good times were few and far between; first there was the war, then the capitulation, and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews.

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

I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.

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.

Man, all lives matter.

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.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama’s entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

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.

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

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

I’m opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.

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.

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.

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.

Freedom is not enough.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

So what we’re talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we’re facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

There are thousands of Palestinians in prison virtually for no reason.