I've long collected and culled quite the conglomerate of all things related to activism and human rights. I've built up quite an extensive collection over the years, which I'm pleased to be able to share with you.
Where applicable, I've included the attributed author as well as the source. And if you have any quotes or notable anecdotes which I've missed, email them to me at humanrightseditor@bellaonline.com, where they will be thoughtfully considered for inclusion.
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
- Abigail Adams
... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
- Alex Carey
Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.
- Aung San Suu Kyii
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
-Dom Helder Camara
The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
- Eleanor Holmes Norton
Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.
Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.
- Eugene V Debbs
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.
True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace. The other phenomena mentioned above are similarly interrelated. Thus, for example, we see that a clean environment, wealth or democracy mean little in the face of war, especially nuclear war, and that material development is not sufficient to ensure human happiness.
Material progress is of course important for human advancement. In Tibet, we paid much to little attention to technological and economic development, and today we realize that this was a mistake. At the same time, material development without spiritual development can also cause serious problems. In some countries too much attention is paid to external things and very little importance is given to inner development. I believe both are important and must be developed side by side so as to achieve a good balance between them. Tibetans are always described by foreign visitors as being a happy, jovial people. This is part of our national character, formed by cultural and religious values that stress the importance of mental peace through the generation of love and kindness to all other living sentient beings, both human and animal. Inner peace is the key: if you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of peace and tranquillity. In that state of mind you can deal with situations with calmness and reason, while keeping your inner happiness. This is very important. Without this inner peace, no matter how comfortable your life is materially, you may still be worried, disturbed or unhappy because of circumstances.
HH, the Dalai Lama, The Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1989
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
- Martin Luther King Jr
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
-Noam Chomsky
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
-Noam Chomsky
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
- Paulo Freire
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
- Pearl S. Buck
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last guys don't finish nice.
-Saul Alinsky
I shall be honored to go to jail. Under a dictatorship, the detention cell is a place of honor.
-Filipino Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
-Vaclev Hazel
If you are not careful,the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
- Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression, Boston South End Press 1990, p.262.
Fear is not the natural state of civilized people
-Aung Sung Suu Kyi.
How come if it's the rich who protest....it's called democracy? But if it's the poor who go there, it's rebellion?
- Joseph Estrada, (Philippines).
It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so.
- Kofi Annan
I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of “accuser” and “accused” is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the “victim” mode.
- Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
A universal renunciation of violence requires the commitment of the whole of society. These are not matters of government but matters of State; not only matters for the authoirities, but for society in its entirety, including civilian, military, and religious bodies. The mobilization which is urgently needed to effect the transition within two or three years from a culture of war to a culture of peace demands co-operation from everyone. In order to change, the world needs everyone.
- Federico Mayor, Director-General of UNESCO
Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings... their importance, their dignity... and agreed that was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
I have cherished the ideal a democratic and free society... it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
- Nelson Mandela
We discovered that peace at any price is no peace at all. We discovered that life at any price has no value whatever; that life is nothing without the privileges, the prides, the rights, the joys which make it worth living, and also worth giving. And we also discovered that there is something more hideous, more atrocious than war or than death; and that is to live in fear.
- Eve Curie
The Universal Declaration... as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...it not only crystallizes the political thought of our times on these matters, but it has also influenced the thinking of legislators all over the world.
- Dag Hammarskjöld, Second UN Secretary-General, 1953-1961
Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
It has long been recognized that an essential element in protecting human rights was a widespread knowledge among the population of what their rights are and how they can be defended.
- Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Sixth UN Secretary-General, 1992-1996
Although we are in different boats you in your boat and we in our canoe we share the same river of life.
- Chief Oren Lyons, Onandaga Nation, USA
We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.
- Rigoberta Menchu, Guatemala Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 1992
Physical violence endured by women migrant workers reportedly ranges from sexual harassment to kicking, beating, slapping, punching and hair-pulling to rape and sexual assualt, sometimes resulting in death.
- Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, addressing a meeting in the Phillipines, 27 May 1996.
Poverty cannot be accepted as a pretext and justification for the exploitation of children. It does not explain the huge global demand with, in many instances, customers from rich countries circumventing their national laws to exploit children in other countries. Sex tourism has spread its illicit wings wide, and paedophiles search for their victims in all parts of the globe. The problem is compounded by the criminal networks which benefit from the trade in children, and by collusion and corruption in many national settings.
- Vitit Muntarbhorn
Printer Friendly Version
