The West Bank is essentially imprisoned.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

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

Rendition is just sending people abroad to be tortured.

In time of war the laws are silent.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

Armed attack has a definition in international law. It means sudden, overwhelming, instantaneous ongoing attack.

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.

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.

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

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

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

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

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.

‚Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age‘ was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

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.

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

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

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

Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

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

I hope I’m wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

Some international law specialists compare the invasion of Iraq to the ‚crimes against the peace‘ for which Nazi leaders were indicted at Nuremberg.

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.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

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

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

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.

It’s always interesting about God because it’s like all of the religions in the world say that they pray to the same God, and yet they ask that same one God to divide itself up and agree with this one and fight against that one.

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

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 gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

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

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.

In the case of Yugoslavia v. NATO, one of the charges was genocide. The U.S. appealed to the court, saying that, by law, the United States is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATO powers, but not against the United States.

The global importance of the Middle East is that it keeps the Far East and the Near East from encroaching on each other.

Morality is contraband in war.

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

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

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.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

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