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.

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.

SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it’s very inexpensive to send mail.

I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.

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

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

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.

I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.

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

I’m pro Union.

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

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.

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.

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.

All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.

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.

The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.

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 or obscured by mortal power.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

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

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

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

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

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.

There has been a huge attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been going on since the Second World War.

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

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth’s treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.

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.

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

Man, all lives matter.

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

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

The Arab population of Palestine are victims of genocidal actions; their lands are confiscated or deprived of water supplies in the semi-desert areas, and their homes are destroyed with heavy wrecking equipment.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

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.

I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

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

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

There is no such thing as part 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.

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.

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.

And every human being is precious.

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.

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

Undocumented aliens unfortunately are not protected by the law, and they are tremendously subjected to exploitation. The result is that they would be willing to work for a wage that no person who is welcome in our shores would take.

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.

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

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.

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.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

It’s hard work making movies. It’s like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it’s emotional, tense work. If you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it.

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.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.