human rights quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

And every human being is precious.

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

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.

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.

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.

Freedom is not enough.

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

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

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

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.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

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.

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.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

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.

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

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.

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

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.