Human Rights Quotes - Page 31

• A culture is not an abstract thing. It is a living, evolving process. The aim is to push beyond standard-setting and asserting human rights to make those standards a living reality for people everywhere.

  Mary Robinson

  Reality, Rights, People

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• ... non-use of rights does not destroy them.

  Matilda Joslyn Gage

  Rights, Doe, Use

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1979). “History of Woman Suffrage”, Ayer Company Pub

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• Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us.

  Cecily McMillan

  Money, Wall, Lying

  "Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan Gets 3 Months in Prison: A Rare Interview". Interview with Ashley Codianni, mashable.com. May 19, 2014.

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• I think I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising. It's just a part of being a girl in 2013.

  Lorde

  Girl, Reality, Thinking

  "Super Heroine: An Interview With Lorde". Interview with Tavi Gevinson, www.rookiemag.com. January 2, 2014.

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• There's a reason survivors choose not to go to the police, and that's because they're treated as the criminals. The rapists are innocent until proven guilty, but survivors are guilty until proven innocent - at least in the eyes of the police.

  Emma Sulkowicz

  Eye, Class, Justice

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• In any conflict area, it is always the women who are the first point of attack. But I think the more they have seen of oppression and violence, they have gotten more brave, more strong, more fearless than they were. You see this refusal to just keep quiet and do as you are told.

  Fatima Bhutto

  Leadership, Wisdom, Strong

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• [Michael] Brown's mom, Lesley McSpadden, is the latest African American mother whose tear-streaked face forces the nation to remember the name of yet another unarmed black teenager gunned down under questionable circumstances.

  Jonathan Capehart

  Family, Mom, Mother

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• It's a struggle every day, to stay present, not to become that...eight year old who was bullied and chased home from school. Some days I wake up and it's like I'm eight years old again. And I'm scared for my life, and I don't know if I'm going to be beaten up that day.

  Laverne Cox

  Struggle, School, Home

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• We are not seeking revolution. We just want democracy.

  Joshua Wong

  Leadership, Justice, Community

  "Hong Kong protesters promise to keep up occupation" by Tania Branigan, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2014.

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• I was raised in a family where we were taught that the best thing you could do with your life was to really kind of push the cause of progress and justice and human rights forward.

  Benjamin Jealous

  Rights, Justice, Progress

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• To be clear, civilization is not the same as society. Civilization is a specific, hierarchical organization based on 'power over.' Dismantling civilization, taking down that power structure, does not mean the end of all social order. It should ultimately mean more justice, more local control, more democracy, and more human rights, not less.

  Derrick Jensen

  Mean, Rights, Order

  "Commonly Asked Questions". deepgreenresistancenewyork.org.

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• Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the times.

  John Prendergast

  Rights, Racism, Abuse

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• The Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Past, America, Rights

  "The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77". Book by Asadollah Alam, p. 535, 1991.

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• Historically the opposition to abortion and birth control ... stemmed from the urgency of the need to decrease the mortality and morbidity rates and to increase the population ... in the matter of abortion the human rights of the mother with her family must take precedence over the survival of a few weeks' old foetus without sense or sensibility.

  Edith Summerskill, Baroness Summerskill

  Mother, Rights, Abortion

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• The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other.

  Angelina Grimke

  School, Rights, Understanding

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• Nations begin to dig their own graves when men talk more of human rights and less of human duties.

  William J. H. Boetcker

  Men, Rights, Graves

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• The basis of human rights is happy life. Everyone wants to lead a happy life for which we need to have a holistic approach.

  Dalai Lama

  Happy Life, Rights, Needs

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• All beings want to live in peace and happiness, undisturbed. Therefore the concept of human rights is universal.

  Dalai Lama

  Rights, Want, Peace And Happiness

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• In the struggle for human rights and justice, Negros will make a mistake if they become bitter and indulge in hate campaigns.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Hate, Mistake, Struggle

  Speech delivered in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College, February 7, 1957.

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• When people are oppressed, and human rights are denied - particularly along sectarian lines or ethnic lines - when dissent is silenced, it feeds violent extremism, it creates an environment that is ripe for terrorists to exploit. When peaceful, democratic change is impossible, it feeds into the terrorist propaganda that violence is the only answer available.

  Barack Obama

  Change, Rights, People

  Barack Obama's remarks at the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism at the State Department in Washington, D.C., obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. February 19, 2015.

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• The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

  Jimmy Carter

  Life, Religious, Freedom

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• Quite often ... these little guys, who might be making atomic weapons or who might be guilty of some human rights violation ... are looking for someone to listen to their problems and help them communicate.

  Jimmy Carter

  Rights, Guy, Littles

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• I love the people of Venezuela. I want that country to have freedom. I want it to have human rights and to be banned by a dictator like Nicolas Maduro is, to me, a badge of honor.

  Marco Rubio

  Love, Country, Freedom

  "Rubio calls Venezuela ban 'a badge of honor'" by John Roberts and The Associated Press, www.foxnews.com. February 28, 2015.

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• I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights, everyone has not only the freedom and the right but the obligation to say what Pope Francis thinks for the common good... we have the right to have this freedom openly without offending.

  Pope Francis

  Freedom, Thinking, Rights

  "After Paris attacks, Pope speaks out against insulting religions" by Philip Pullella, www.reuters.com. January 15, 2015.

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• The Singapore judicial system's shameful recourse to using torture - in the form of caning - to punish crimes that should be misdemeanors is indicative of a blatant disregard for international human rights standards, one of the defendants said that sentencing day was the darkest day of his life, but in reality every day that Singapore keeps caning on its books is a dark day for the country's international reputation.

  Phil Robertson

  Life, Country, Book

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