Better World Quotes - Human Rights

Human Rights Quotes

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"Whatever career you may choose for yourself - doctor, lawyer, teacher - let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
-- Aung San Suu Kyi
"Please use your freedom to promote ours."
-- Aung San Suu Kyi

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham Lincoln
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
-- Abraham Lincoln

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
-- John Locke

By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows ascend with us.
-- Edwin Markham

* “Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.”
-- Bob Marley
“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.”
-- Bob Marley

The cost in human lives and suffering is so high that we all have to work to end violence and oppression once and for all. We have to proclaim that every human being is equal, in dignity, in freedom —and, as the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, we have to live “in a spirit of brotherhood.”
-- Federico Mayor

* We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.
-- Rigoberta Menchu, Guatemala Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 1992

An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.
-- Montesquieu
You are a human being. You have rights inherent in that reality. You have dignity and worth that exists prior to law.
-- Lyn Beth Neylon
"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communist and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionists. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Pastor Niemoeler

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
-- Eleanor Holmes Norton

And we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought for freedom's soul?
Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole?
-- John Boyle O'Reilly

Together we can prevent genocide from happening again. Together we can make a better future for our children. -- Dith Pran

“Caged birds sing of freedom, free birds fly.”
-- Thorolf Rafto

We believe that human rights transcend boundaries and must prevail over state sovereignty.
-- José Ramos-Horta

* Today's human rights violations are the causes of tomorrow's conflicts.
-- Mary Robinson

I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of “accuser” and “accused” is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the “victim” mode..
-- Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
"Human rights are inscribed in the hearts of people; they were there long before lawmakers drafted their first proclamation." -- Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
"Nations will rise and fall, but equality remains the ideal. The universal aim is to achieve respect for the entire human race, not just for the dominant few."
-- Carlos P. Romulo
Human Rights Quotes
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HUMAN RIGHTS
HERO PIX

Mahnaz Afkhami | Hannah Arendt | Roger Nash Baldwin
Carol Bellamy | Peter Benenson | Stephen Biko
Jimmy Carter | Dalai Lama | Paul Farmer
Peter Gabriel | Mohandas Gandhi | Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Dag Hammarskjold | Thomas Jefferson | Chief Joseph
Bob Marley | Mary Robinson | Eleanor Roosevelt
Carl Sagan | Ginetta Sagan

Human Rights Day - December 10
Civil Rights Day - August 12