Human Rights Quotes - Page 35

• I don't think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. I think that's why he fled, [because] that is what he faced.

  Rand Paul

  Leadership, Party, Technology

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• In battle, combatants engaged in war against America get no due process and may lawfully be killed. But citizens not in a battlefield - however despicable - are guaranteed a trial by our Constitution. No one argues that Americans who commit treason shouldn't be punished. The maximum penalty for treason is death. But the Constitution specifies the process necessary to convict.

  Rand Paul

  Father, War, Technology

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• We do have to treat people the way Americans always treat people, with the highest level of compassion and care. But they will have to be returned, because that is the law. If you ignore that, if you don't apply that - as heartbreaking as it may be - you are basically telling another 80,000 people to try to come.

  Marco Rubio

  Leadership, Compassion, Reality

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• Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything-it can stop the Vietnam War. It can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.

  Antonin Scalia

  Leadership, War, Reality

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• I view the United States, today, much like East Berlin. And I'm off the grid. I've tried for 20 years to warn the country about the Democrats and Republicans, and nobody's listening.

  Jesse Ventura

  Country, Party, Technology

  "Jesse Ventura hiding from drones" by Tal Kopan, www.politico.com. February 5, 2014.

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• You know, my father was a great encouragement for me because he spoke out for women's rights, he spoke out for girl's education. And at that time I said that why should I wait for someone else, why should I be looking to the government, to the army that they would help us? Why don't I raise my voice, why don't we speak up for our rights?

  Malala Yousafzai

  Leadership, Girl, Education

  "Watch This Incredible Young Woman Render Jon Stewart Speechless". "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, www.upworthy.com. October 10, 2013.

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• We are human beings, and this is the part of our human nature, that we don't learn the importance of anything until it's snatched from our hands.

  Malala Yousafzai

  Wisdom, Hands, History

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• Adults who enter into public life implicitly consent to having less privacy, but their families - especially their children - should not be treated callously or thoughtlessly.

  Melissa Harris-Perry

  Family, Leadership, Wisdom

  "MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry Offers Televised Apology for Romney Segment" by Erik Hayden, www.hollywoodreporter.com. January 04, 2014.

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• The aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundations stones - to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together.

  Mary Robinson

  Moving, Thinking, Rights

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• 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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