231 Human rights Quotes

A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

Germany will regard the Jewish question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German living space... Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after the very last Jew has left the continent.

Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.

If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool.

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

The United States government does not authorise or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under US law, wherever they may occur in the world.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

The desire for freedom resides in every human heart. And that desire cannot be contained forever by prison walls, or martial laws, or secret police. Over time, and across the Earth, freedom will find a way.

Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.

Listen, when you take my liberty away, you've taken away more-something more precious than life. I mean, what good is a life without liberty? Huh? None.

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

I am not here as a public official, but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.

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.

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

There must be a punitive expedition against the Jews in Russia, a punitive expedition which will expect: death sentence and execution. Then the world will see the end of the Jews is also the end of Bolshevism.

First and foremost, I'm a feminist. And basically that stems from a strong belief that all people and creatures deserve equal opportunity, rights and respect.

I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all.

Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.

You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.

We must recognize the full human equality of all our people - before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this not because it is economically advantageous - although it is; not because the laws of God and man command it - although they do command it; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.

We would have to make clear to our German ally our disagreement on three points: treatment of the occupied countries, excesses towards the Jews, and relations with the Papacy. One ought to try to create a true European federation respectful of each nationality.

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong - throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

'You have babies at home. And you have a life. And if you don't, you have to realize that we're people and that we just need privacy and we need our respect. And those are things that you have to have as a human being.'

Do you think I am an automaton? - a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal - as we are!

Sometimes people decide to write reports even though they haven't been to Guantanamo. And so I would just suggest that people look at some of the work that's been done by people who have been there. But that's not to say that we will not be very glad at the day that conditions permit the closure of Guantanamo and the trying of its inhabitants or for their release.

I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species... and to disperse the families I have an aversion.

The Supreme Court of the United States... has validated the Nazi method of execution in... concentration camps, starving them to death!

Once again, through myself, the Church, in the words of the well-known declaration Nostra Aetate, 'deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.' I repeat, 'By anyone.'

The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.

It is still in the lap of the gods whether a society can succeed which is based on 'civil liberties and human rights' conceived as I have tried to describe them; but of one thing at least we may be sure: the alternatives that have so far appeared have been immeasurably worse.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries, who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.

Well, it's a gloomy rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse, I could be in Saudi Arabia where men are men, and women are cattle.

Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

Other people have called me a 'human rights' activist. I don't mind the label, but I don't think I'd go so far. It puts me on par with other extraordinary activists. I'm just an average guy with a bigger mouth than average.

I guess the clarification I should make here is that Japan is as potentially racist as anywhere else, but for a developed country, the legal and social protections and recourses afforded to people of differences are lacking comparatively. Racial discrimination is still not illegal in Japan, and this is something the Japanese government promised to fix when it signed the UN Convention on it in 1995. In short, Japan is not an outlier in terms of racism, but it is in terms of protections against it.

Its first ethical precept is the identity of means used and aims sought. The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and wellbeing. Unless this be the essential aim of revolution, violent social changes would have no justification. For external social alterations can be, and have been, accomplished by the normal processes of evolution. Revolution, on the contrary, signifies not mere external change, but internal, basic, fundamental change. That internal change of concepts and ideas, permeating ever-larger social strata, finally culminates in the violent upheaval known as revolution.

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

Torture will give a dozen pence or more To keep a drab from bawling at his door. The public taste is quite a different thing- Torture is positively paid to sing.

Disavow anyone who provokes or accepts the extermination of a race to which he does not belong.

You can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, no matter how much we pay him.

But I think we have to be very vigilant. We have to stop the rot wherever we find it. Some fifty years ago, a few people created horror, but far too many, knowing about it, tolerated it. It started then just as now - with graffiti, vulgar jokes, and knowing winks. Then it was the Jews, now it is the Turks and the Vietnamese. The moment one hears somebody say something offensive to human dignity in any way, whether against foreigners or people of other faiths or colour, one must protest and argue. These individual attitudes must never go unchallenged. The obscenity of discrimination will only be stopped if we accept individual responsibility for never, in a single instance, allowing it to go unchallenged. That, I think, is our task - yes, as our parents' children.

Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.

We need to tranquilize our neighbors. State officials ought to remain in ignorance. Let the Armenians wait, opportunities will certainly come our way too. Turkey belongs only to the Turks.

Necessary preparations have been discussed and taken for the complete and fundamental elimination of this concern, which occupies an important place in the exalted state's list of vital issues.

The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

The value of our shared reward will and must be measured by the joyful peace which will triumph, because the common humanity that bonds both black and white into one human race, will have said to each one of us that we shall all live like the children of paradise. Thus shall we live, because we will have created a society which recognises that all people are born equal, with each entitled in equal measure to life, liberty, prosperity, human rights and good governance. Such a society should never allow again that there should be prisoners of conscience nor that any person's human right should be violated.

In relation to these matters, we appeal to those who govern Burma that they release our fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, and engage her and those she represents in serious dialogue, for the benefit of all the people of Burma. We pray that those who have the power to do so will, without further delay, permit that she uses her talents and energies for the greater good of the people of her country and humanity as a whole.

We live with the hope that as she battles to remake herself, South Africa, will be like a microcosm of the new world that is striving to be born. This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees.

Ours has been a quest for a constitution freely adopted by the people of South Africa, reflecting their wishes and their aspirations. The struggle for democracy has never been a matter pursued by one race, class, religious community or gender among South Africans. In honouring those who fought to see this day arrive, we honour the best sons and daughters of all our people. We can count amongst them Africans, Coloureds, Whites, Indians, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews - all of them united by a common vision of a better life for the people of this country.

Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded. In the political order we have established there will regular, open and free elections, at all levels of government - central, provincial and municipal. There shall also be a social order which respects completely the culture, language and religious rights of all sections of our society and the fundamental rights of the individual.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign! The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement! God bless Africa!

No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.

The victory of democracy in South Africa is the common achievement of all humanity.

I detest racialism because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings.

Zimbabwe on the other hand is a tragedy. Those of us who fought for the liberation of black Zimbabweans from racist minority white rule feel just as betrayed by Robert Mugabe's despotic regime as do his people. He has presided over the demolition of a once prosperous and beautiful African country into a state of desperation for its people who are starved and oppressed by his tyranny. I strongly support European sanctions against Mugabe and his ruling clique. We must do all in our power to help the people of Zimbabwe achieve their freedom and prosperity once again.

'(Silence) denies the existence of HIV/AIDS, and prevents discussion of the human rights violations fuelling the pandemic, and constrains the mobilisation of resources and partnerships required to expand the prevention and care (of HIV/AIDS)'.

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man. Without liberty, the brain is a dungeon, where the chained thoughts die with their pinions pressed against the hingeless doors.

Legal issues aside, the American people and government should never abide the use of torture by our military or intelligence agencies. A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence. Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe. God forbid terrorists take American soldiers or travelers hostage and torture them as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Gharib.

The most pressing foreign policy problem we face is to identify the circumstances in which we should get actively involved in other people's conflicts. Non-interference has long been considered an important principle of international order. And it is not one we would want to jettison too readily. One state should not feel it has the right to change the political system of another or foment subversion or seize pieces of territory to which it feels it should have some claim. But the principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects. Acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter. When oppression produces massive flows of refugees which unsettle neighbouring countries then they can properly be described as 'threats to international peace and security'. When regimes are based on minority rule they lose legitimacy - look at South Africa.

We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.

Torture, encouraged from above, became a fact of life [in occupied Iraq]. Perhaps some good liberal apologist for Blair will soon explain how democratic torture is much nicer than authoritarian torture.

Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves.

The war we have to wage today has only one goal and that is to make the world safe for diversity.

You may ask what kind of republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic that serves the individual and that therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such people it is impossible to solve any of our problems - human, economic, ecological, social, or political.

I am referring to respect for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights and to the principle that all power derives from the people. I am, in short, referring to the fundamental ideas of modern democracy. What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.

The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world.

Havel ... invokes ... 'higher law' when he claims that 'human rights, human freedoms . . . and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world . . . while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God.' He seems to be saying that NATO forces were allowed to violate international law because they acted as direct instruments of the 'higher law' of God - a clear-cut case of religious fundamentalism.

Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.

The truth about Kolchak (and his double, Denikin) has now been revealed in full. The shooting of tens of thousands of workers. The shooting even of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. The flogging of peasants of entire districts. The public flogging of women. The absolutely unbridled power of the officers, the sons of landowners. Endless looting. Such is the truth about Kolchak and Denikin.

The present Government of Finland on coming into power executed in cold blood within a few days' time 16,700 members of the old Socialist Republic, and imprisoned in starvation camps 70,000 more. Meanwhile the total executions in Russia for the year ended November 1, 1918, were officially stated to have been 3,800, including many corrupt Soviet of officials as well as counter-revolutionists. The Finnish Government was infinitely more terroristic than the Russian.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

If you are a Christian, you are in danger. Even if you are an atheist, you are in danger, and if you decide to convert to Islam, this will not save you, either, because traditional Islam is inimical to the conditions and objectives set by them [the terrorists]. If you are prepared to become a most radical Islamist and are prepared to circumcise yourself, I invite you to come to Moscow. I will recommend having the operation done in such a way that nothing will grow for you there anymore.

...Block 10 was made up of mostly married women between the ages of 20 and 40, preferably those who had not borne children. There was a constant fear in Block 10 of being killed, sterilized, or inseminated by Clauberg. He would often tease the female prisoners that they would all undergo sexual intercourse with a male prisoner chosen especially for this purpose. At least one of the Orthodox Jewish women who heard that Clauberg selected her to be a Block 10 prostitute decided to poison herself. After he inseminated the women, Clauberg would often taunt the strapped-in women by stating that he had inseminated their wombs with animal sperm and that monsters were growing in their wombs. Ultimately, 300 women prisoners were experimented on in Cell Block 10...

Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

The Porte, acting under the same obligation, and wishing to secure the safety of its army and its citizens, took energetic measures to check these uprisings. The deportation of the Armenians was one of these preventive measures. I admit also that the deportation was not carried out lawfully everywhere. In some places unlawful acts were committed. The already existing hatred among the Armenians and Mohammedans, intensified by the barbarous activities of the former, had created many tragic consequences. Some of the officials abused their authority, and in many places people took preventive measures into their own hands and innocent people were molested. I confess it. I confess, also, that the duty of the Government was to prevent these abuses and atrocities, or at least to hunt down and punish their perpetrators severely. In many places, where the property and goods of the deported people were looted, and the Armenians molested, we did arrest those who were responsible and punished them according to the law. I confess, however, that we ought to have acted more sternly, opened up a general investigation for the purpose of finding out all the promoters and looters and punished them severely.

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want. We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of our people who dared to rise up against a social system whose very essence is war, violence, racism, oppression, repression and the impoverishment of an entire people. I am also here today as a representative of the millions of people across the globe, the anti-apartheid movement, the governments and organisations that joined with us, not to fight against South Africa as a country or any of its peoples, but to oppose an inhuman system and sue for a speedy end to the apartheid crime against humanity. These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted together in defense of justice and a common human decency. Because of their courage and persistence for many years, we can, today, even set the dates when all humanity will join together to celebrate one of the outstanding human victories of our century. When that moment comes, we shall, together, rejoice in a common victory over racism, apartheid and white minority rule.

As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance

The history of the human race has generated several papers articulating basic moral imperatives, or fundamental principles, of human coexistence that - maybe in association with concurring historical events - substantially influenced the fate of humanity on this planet. Among these historic documents, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - adopted fifty years ago today - holds a very special, indeed, unique position. It is the first code of ethical conduct that was not a product of one culture, or one sphere of civilization only, but a universal creation, shaped and subscribed to by representatives of all humankind. Since its very inception, the Declaration has thus represented a planetary, or global commitment, a global intention, a global guideline. For this reason alone, this exceptional document - conceived as a result of a profound human self-reflection in the wake of the horrors of World War II, and retaining its relevance ever since - deserves to be remembered today.