Rights Quotes - Page 20

• If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

  Langston Hughes

  Government, Buffalo, Elk

  Langston Hughes (2015). “The Best of Simple”, p.63, Hill and Wang

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• American civil rights leader, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Lynching is a murder. For the past four hundred years our people have been lynched physically, but now it's done politically. We're lynched politically, we're lynched economically, we're lynched socially, we're lynched in every way that you can imagine.

  Malcolm X

  Past, Lynching, Years

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• We are fighting for the right to live as free humans in this society. In fact, we are actually fighting for rights that are even greater than civil rights and that is human rights.

  Malcolm X

  Fighting, Facts, This Society

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• Racism is a human problem and a crime that is absolutely so ghastly that a person who is fighting racism is well within his rights to fight against it by any means necessary until it is eliminated.

  Malcolm X

  Mean, Fighting, Racism

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• The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.

  Ida B. Wells

  Law, Giving, Afros

  Ida B. Wells-Barnett (2014). “On Lynchings”, p.16, Courier Corporation

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• Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

  William Hazlitt

  Reform, Settings, Objections

  William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.148

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• Principles-and I have in mind such principles as states' rights or national sovereignty or the free market or pacifism-have a way of drying up while the sap of life goes flowing in another direction.

  Max Lerner

  Mind, Principles, Sap

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• During war we imprison the rights of man.

  Jean Giraudoux

  War, Men

  Jean Giraudoux (1963). “Judith. Tiger at the gates. Duel of angels”

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• On September 17, 1914, Erzberger, the well-known German statesman, an eminent member of the Catholic Party, wrote to the Minister of War, General von Falkenhayn, "We must not worry about committing an offence against the rights of nations nor about violating the laws of humanity. Such feelings today are of secondary importance"? A month later, on October 21, 1914, he wrote in Der Tag, "If a way was found of entirely wiping out the whole of London it would be more humane to employ it than to allow the blood of A SINGLE GERMAN SOLDIER to be shed on the battlefield!"

  Georges Clemenceau

  War, Party, Blood

  "Grandeur and Misery of Victory". Book by Georges Clemenceau, trans. F. M. Atkinson, p. 279 (quoting Matthias Erzberger), 1930.

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• Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Pain, Children, Desire

  "Trayvon Martin Case Reminds Us: Never Be Silent" by Ingrid Newkirk, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 17, 2012.

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• The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.

  Agnes Repplier

  World, Mirth, Guardian

  Agnes Repplier (1904). “Compromises”

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• If you have to design something, choose things that we need as opposed to frivolous things that we might just want for a month or two for bragging rights.

  Saul Griffith

  Two, Design, Needs

  "Built to Last". Good Magazine Interview, www.good.is. January 14, 2010.

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• If some people got their rights they would complain of being deprived of their wrongs.

  Oliver Herford

  People, Society, Complaining

  Oliver Herford, Addison Mizner (1907). “The Cynic's Calendar of Revised Wisdom...”

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• Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.

  Aviva Chomsky

  Country, Law, Drunk

  Aviva Chomsky (2007). “They Take Our Jobs!: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration”, p.184, Beacon Press

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• It’s notable that the countries that most pride themselves on their commitment to equality, human rights, and democracy (like the United States and the western European countries) are precisely those that, in the late twentieth century, invented a new status (‘illegal’) in order to deprive some of their residents of access to equality, human rights, and democracy.I am honored to lend my name to PICUM’s campaign to end the use of the term ‘illegal’ and to challenge the whole concept of illegality as a status.

  Aviva Chomsky

  Country, Commitment, Pride

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• In the new century, we should continue to work together to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the vast number of developing countries including China and India and promote the establishment of a just and equitable new international political and economic order.

  Li Peng

  Country, Order, Numbers

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• It is the purpose of the government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Government, Purpose, Welfare

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (2009). “Looking Forward”, p.111, Simon and Schuster

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• The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Government, Groups, Citizens

  Commonwealth Club Address, delivered 23 Sept 1932, San Francisco, CA

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• It is my mission to help in the breaking down of classes, and to make all men feel as if they were brethren of the same family, sharing the same rights, the same capabilities, and the same responsibilities. While my hand can hold a pen, I will use it to this end; and while my brain can earn a dollar, I will devote it to this end.

  Lydia M. Child

  Responsibility, Equality, Men

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• Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.

  Paul Valery

  Society, Moments, Social

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• We [Americans] have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Passion, Men, Gains

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1977). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• Putting the World to Rights

  Margaret Thatcher

  Confidence, World

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• True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged new ones.

  Emma Goldman

  Broken, Feminism, Movement

  "Anarchism and Other Essays".

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• Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Children, Shopping, Next

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• Suffering gives us no special rights.

  Albert Camus

  Giving, Suffering, Special

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