Famous Quotes & Sayings

Franklin D. Roosevelt

No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.

Joichi Ito

It would be easy to define terrorism as attacks against human rights and international humanitarian law forbids attacks against innocent non-combatants which is often the definition used for terrorism.

Joichi Ito

Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific.

Joichi Ito

If we destroy human rights and rule of law in response to terrorism, they have won.

John Bruton

The E.U. is more than just a trade organization or a common market; it is a guarantee of democracy, freedom, justice, and human rights. Nations cannot stay in the E.U. if they do not respect these guarantees.

Luis Gutierrez

The next step has to be the necessary step. It's always to put the immigrant community and the civil rights movement ahead of partisan politics.

John Charles Polanyi

Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.

James Connolly

There can be no perfect Europe in which Ireland is denied even the least of its national rights.

Orville Redenbacher

It proved easier to buy the farm to get the mineral rights than to buy the coal rights alone.

Olof Palme

For us democracy is a question of human dignity. And human dignity is political freedom, the right to freely express opinion and the right to be allowed to criticise and form opinions. Human dignity is the right to health, work, education and social welfare. Human dignity is the right and the practical possibility to shape the future with others. These rights, the rights of democracy, are not reserved for a select group within society, they are the rights of all the people.

Olof Palme

The rights of democracy are not reserved for a select group within society, they are the rights of all the people.

Oliver Stone

[Fidel Castro] has a very good [human rights] record.

Oliver Cromwell

I desire not to keep my place in this government an hour longer than I may preserve England in its just rights, and may protect the people of God in such a just liberty of their consciences...

Octavia Spencer

Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.

Ellen DeGeneres

If anybody could put themselves in that situation of feeling a giant loud voice saying you don't deserve the same rights, you are different and you are not equal, it feels really bad.

It's outrageous, ... It's an infringement on the rights of children.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.

Nelson Mandela

But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.

Nelson Mandela

There's one place where (Fidel Castro’s) Cuba stands out head and shoulders above the rest – that is in its love for human rights and liberty!

Nelson Mandela

As long as women are bound by poverty and as long as they are looked down upon, human rights will lack substance.

Rachel Maddow

Here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.

Noam Chomsky

There is no western concern for issues of aggression, atrocities, human rights abuses and so on if there's a profit to be made from them

Noam Chomsky

The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic.

Noam Chomsky

The term 'globalisation' is conventionally used to refer to the specific form of investor-rights integration designed by wealth and power, for their own interests.

Noam Chomsky

Terror became a big issue when the Reagan Administration came in. They immediately announced [their plans] and kind of disparaged Carter's alleged human rights programs. The main issue is state-directed international terrorism. Right at that time that big industry developed. That's when you start getting the academic departments on terrorism.

Noam Chomsky

The US and Israel have demanded further that Palestinians not only recognize Israel's rights as a state in the international system, but that they also recognize Israel's abstract right to exist, a concept that has no place in international law or diplomacy, and a right claimed by no one. In effect, the US and Israel are demanding that Palestinians . . . formally accept the legitimacy of their expulsion from their own land. They cannot be expected to accept that, just as Mexico does not grant the US the right to exist on half of Mexico's territory, gained by conquest.

John Ashcroft

[Ashcroft vowed to] spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag.

John Green

Tonight, darling, we are going to right a lot of wrongs. And we are going to wrong some rights. The first shall be last; the last shall be first; the meek shall do some earth-inheriting. But before we can radically reshape the world, we need to shop.

Caroline Norton

I do not ask for my rights. I have no rights. I have only wrongs.

Evo Morales

Israel does not respect the principles or purposes of the United Nations charter nor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

Evo Morales

The new republic should be based on diversity, respect and equal rights for all.

Moby

There might be a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats on key social issues like women's rights and health care. But when it comes to taking corporate cash, they're pretty much the same beast.

Judith Butler

Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.