Basic Human Rights Quotes

• Citizenship has not delivered Indigenous Australians the same quality of life other Australians expect. Basic human rights involve health, housing, education, employment, economic opportunity, and equality before the law, and respect for cultural identity and cultural diversity. These human rights must be capable of being enjoyed otherwise they are empty gestures.

  Jackie Huggins

  Life, Opportunity, Law

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• Everyone has a right to peaceful coexistence, the basic personal freedoms, the alleviation of suffering, and the opportunity to lead a productive life.

  Jimmy Carter

  Peace, Freedom, Opportunity

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• Life is not a matter of place, things or comfort; rather, it concerns the basic human rights of family, country, justice and human dignity.

  Imelda Marcos

  Life, Country, Rights

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day.

  Aung San

  Rights, Order, Deny

  Acceptance message for the 1990 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, July 1991.

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• Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Fear, People, Natural

  Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). “Freedom from fear: and other writings”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

  Haile Selassie

  Dream, Philosophy, Eye

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 6 October 1963

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• I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.

  Bram Cohen

  Technology, Rights, Political

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• I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan.

  Chen Shui-bian

  Confidence, Rights, Roots

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• Their prejudice allowed white Southerners to look the other way when blacks were denied their most basic human rights, and it encouraged the worst of them to engage in unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence.

  Linda Chavez

  White, Rights, Violence

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• Those of us who decided to work for democracy in Burma made our choice in the conviction that the danger of standing up for basic human rights in a repressive society was preferable to the safety of a quiescent life in servitude

  Aung San

  Rights, Safety, Choices

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• I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it's one that's easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

  Jimmy Carter

  Mother, Country, Children

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• A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Men, Self, Common Sense

  Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). “Freedom from fear: and other writings”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• 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

  Acceptance, Rights, Atmosphere

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• There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Liberty, Libertarian, Damn

  "The Liberty Manifesto". Speech delivered for the opening of the Cato Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 6, 1993.

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• It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Crush, Men, Iron

  Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). “Freedom from fear: and other writings”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Just because a child's parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Education, Children, Rights

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• The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Religious, Men, Rights

  "The Opening of the American Mind" by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., www.nytimes.com. July 23, 1989.

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• I come out of the environment of the Deep South, where I had seen the millstone of racial discrimination weighting down my people, both the black people and the white people; and I had seen the enormous progress that we were able to make after we removed the legal restraints of a two-class society, with the whites superior and blacks inferior. So I was very convinced before I became President that basic human rights, equality of opportunity, the end of abuse by governments of their people, was a basic principle on which the United States should be an acknowledged champion.

  Jimmy Carter

  Opportunity, Rights, Government

  The National Security Archive Interview, nsarchive.gwu.edu.

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• The challenging of repression by a new generation of activists - from Malala Yousafzai to Pussy Riot - across the globe reminded us how many women are still fighting for basic human rights. Our great-grandmothers' struggle in all its shocking detail seemed so relevant.

  Sarah Gavron

  Struggle, Grandmother, Fighting

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• In a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. Never let fear prevent you from doing right.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Real, Rights, Order

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• My parents are big liberals and taught us to never trust a government that rids their people of basic human rights.

  Andrea Suarez Paz

  Rights, Government, Taught Us

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• The promises of Fidel Castro's so-called revolution of pluralism and democracy, were and continue to be a false promise and a betrayal of all basic human rights.

  Andy Garcia

  Betrayal, Rights, Promise

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• [White men] has the audacity to call himself even the "Leader of the Free World" while he has a country that can't even give the basic human rights to over twenty-two million of its citizens. This is aud-, this is, this takes audacity; this takes nerve. So it is this attitude today that's causing the Americans to be condemned.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Attitude, Men

  Source: nyx.uky.edu

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• We must build a movement for education, not incarceration. A movement for jobs, not jails. A movement that will end all forms of discrimination against people released from prison - discrimination that denies them basic human rights to work, shelter and food.

  Michelle Alexander

  Jobs, Jail, Rights

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.

  Armstrong Williams

  Religious, Rights, Hands

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