Quotes about Human rights

if we start haggling with human rights we end up in a society where the only one having any human rights is the one who has deprived everybody else of theirs.

Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion — we protect religion. And talk about a lifestyle choice — that is absolutely a choice... It’s a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights as someone else.

The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration.  She caused Man to fall, so she became a scapegoat.  No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her.  That is Woman in the Book of Genesis.  Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local color.  At first the Sky was very close to the Earth.  But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot, or in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded millet or, as in yet another rendering - so prodigious is Man’s inventiveness, she wiped her kitchen hands in the Sky’s face.  Whatever the detail of Woman’s provocation, the Sky moved away in anger, and God with it.

Well, that kind of candid chauvinism might be ok for the rugged taste of the Old Testament.  The New Testament required a more enlightened, more refined, more loving even, strategy - ostensibly that is.  So the idea cam to Man to turn his spouse into the very Mother of God, to pick her up from right under his foot where she’d been since Creation and carry her reverently to a nice, corner pedestal.  Up there, her feet completely off the ground, she will be just as irrelevant to the practical decisions of running the world as she was in her bad old days.  The only difference is that now Man will suffer no guilt feelings; he can sit back and congratulate himself on his generosity and gentle manliness.

Meanwhile, our ancestors out here, unaware of the New Testament, were working out independently a parallel subterfuge of their own.  Nneka, they said.  Mother is supreme.  Let us keep her in reserve until the ultimate crisis arrives and the waist is broken and hung over the fire, and the palm bears its fruit at the tail of its leaf.  Then, as the world crashes around Man’s ears, Woman in her supremacy will descend and sweep the shards together.

The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest.

"A child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi . . . has the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

Take It Higher : Take It Sacred

We need more everyday heroes. Heroes are ordinary people who take a stand for what is right.

We need more everyday heroes like Sumner Davenport, Brenda Mueller, Cherryl Stewart and others who take a stand for human rights. These heroes act with integrity, look fear in the face, go the distance, stand against oppression and endure the cost of disappointment, betrayal and sometimes, pain.  

These everyday heroes experience immeasurable rewards for their journey. We all have the opportunity to be everyday heroes. These women show us it is possible.

When the waters rise the fish eat the ants;
when the waters recede the ants eat the fish.

The communications revolution has given millions of people both a wider and more detailed understanding of the world. Because of technology, ordinary citizens enjoy access to information that formerly was available only to elites and nation-states. One consequence of this change is that citizens have become acutely conscious of environmental destruction, entrenched poverty, health catastrophes, human rights abuses, failing education systems, and escalating violence. Another consequence is that people possess powerful communication tools to coordinate efforts to attack those problems.

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

“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.”

“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way around. Human rights invented America.”

Every social trait labelled masculine or feminine is in truth a human trait. It is our human right to develop and contribute our talents whatever our race, sex, religion, ancestry, age. Human rights are indivisible!

The man who holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

Censorship is almost systematically the weapon of first resort for governments in uncertain political situations. So not only are the famous writers and bold journalists in danger; at every level of public and private life, the freedoms to think, read or write are denied. In the absence of a free press, other human rights abuses flourish unabated. Nothing is reported, criticized, questioned. The example of imprisonment, torture or execution imposes a further silence. A blindly obedient mob mentality is encouraged, driven by extremist religious or ethnic loyalties. The citizens do not know what is happening. Fear and ignorance permeate discussion.

We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings. We are fighting for . . . human rights.

Economic and military power can be developed under the spur of laws and appropriations. But moral power does not derive from any act of Congress. It depends on the relations of a people to their God. It is the churches to which we must look to develop the resources for the great moral offensive that is required to make human rights secure, and to win a just and lasting peace.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today, at home and around the world!

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

When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.

History down through the centuries has proved again and again that there can be but one outcome to a struggle for selfish power against forces fighting to protect and advance human rights. Those genuinely serving humanity always ultimately emerge triumphant. It is under their standards that the [Western] allies choose to throw in their lot for humanity's defense.

That from the heart come good thoughts and bad thoughts is the message of the Savior. By the right choice, and through application of thought, man ascends to divine perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beasts. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character and man in their maker and master. Jesus taught that from within the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual vice, acts of theft, murder, adultery, greed. When men commit these crimes individually or collectively, they trespass upon human rights and, of course, bring misery into the world. A noble and godlike character is no thing of favor or chance, but is a natural result of continued effort and right thinking, the effect of long cherished associations with godlike thoughts.

From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been; abandoned.

I'm a liberal when it comes to human rights, the poor; so's George Bush. . . . But Liberal and Conservative don't mean much to me anymore. Does that mean we care about people and are interested and want to help? And if that makes you a Liberal, so be it.