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5c1a73a The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. human-rights politics inspirational John F. Kennedy
af62972 Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death. human-rights death euthanasia animals Milan Kundera
c418dec Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must -- at that moment -- become the center of the universe. human-rights responsibility inspirational Elie Wiesel
f22e784 Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. human-rights righteousness america freedom inspirational stream peace justice water pride Martin Luther King Jr.
4dc834f The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list -- yes, even the short skirts and the dancing -- are worth dying for? The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared. human-rights freedom terrorism fundamentalism fanaticism Salman Rushdie
82454b8 At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers? human-rights india equality women reality truth inspirational environmental-degradation false-gods narmada-valley dam government-corruption corporations nationalism economics government capitalism exploitation Arundhati Roy
2b23b15 Democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one's beloved extended community. human-rights leadership accountability beloved-community civic-responsibility civic-virtue civil-disobedience communities democratic-process discourse-on-democracy discourse-on-freedom editorials-on-democracy leadership-characteristics leadership-theory political-art political-chaos political-ethics political-poets political-posters political-rights practicing-democracy right-to-vote sustainable-living teaching-democracy political-commentary gun-laws civic-duty gun-violence presidential-election discourse-on-a-better-world police-culture postered-poetics-by-aberjhani political-theory peace-on-earth emigrants national-history-day police-reform voting immigration political-philosophy peace democracy Aberjhani
2dcded4 But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me! racism human-rights social-justice slavery Harriet Beecher Stowe
849bb45 The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. human-rights nations foundations revolt justice-system justification nation Martin Luther King Jr.
bc0802b The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame. human-rights international-human-rights-law international-law henry-kissinger war-crimes united-states law Christopher Hitchens
c345d97 I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity. human-rights humanity simplicity patriotism Victor Hugo
ae87922 I thought society would do the right thing. Now I look around and I think -- society never does the right thing. Sometimes people do the right thing. Sometimes one person makes a difference. But civilization has rules, and I've learned them well -- never be helpless, never be sick, never be poor. human-rights poverty kindness society helplessness health sickness Christina Dodd
dc3c50f Of course, women are capable of all sorts of major unpleasantness, and there are violent crimes by women, but the so-called war of the sexes is extraordinarily lopsided when it comes to actual violence. Unlike the last (male) head of the International Monetary Fund, the current (female) head is not going to assault an employee at a luxury hotel; top-ranking female officers in the US military, unlike their male counterparts, are not accused of any sexual assaults; and young female athletes, unlike those male football players in Steubenville, aren't likely to urinate on unconscious boys, let alone violate them and boast about it in YouTube videos and Twitter feeds. No female bus riders in India have ganged up to sexually assault a man so badly he dies of his injuries, nor are marauding packs of women terrorizing men in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and there's no maternal equivalent to the 11 percent of rapes that are by fathers or stepfathers. human-rights feminism rebecca-solnit gender Rebecca Solnit
71c07e9 As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was arguably less so. (Edward incautiously dismissed 'speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings or sabotage commercial airliners' as the feverish product of 'highly exaggerated stereotypes.') took as its point of departure the Iranian revolution, which by then had been fully counter-revolutionized by the forces of the Ayatollah. Yes, it was true that the Western press--which was one half of the pun about 'covering'--had been naive if not worse about the Pahlavi regime. Yes, it was true that few Middle East 'analysts' had had any concept of the latent power of Shi'ism to create mass mobilization. Yes, it was true that almost every stage of the Iranian drama had come as a complete surprise to the media. But wasn't it also the case that Iranian society was now disappearing into a void of retrogressive piety that had levied war against Iranian Kurdistan and used medieval weaponry such as stoning and amputation against its internal critics, or even against those like unveiled women whose very existence constituted an offense? human-rights women iran amputation carnegie-endowment covering-islam iranian-kurdistan iranian-revolution khomeini mohammed-reza-pahlavi shiism stoning women-and-religion women-in-iran women-in-islam theocracy september-11-attacks middle-east edward-said media womens-rights new-york Christopher Hitchens
f82fd3a At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentina.' In my above album of things that seem to make life pointful and worthwhile, and that even occasionally suggest, in Dr. King's phrase as often cited by President Obama, that there could be a long arc in the moral universe that slowly, eventually bends toward justice, this would constitute an exceptional entry. It was also something more than a nudge to my memory. There was a time when the name of Jacobo Timerman, the kidnapped and tortured editor of the newspaper in Buenos Aires, was a talismanic one. The mere mention of it was enough to elicit moans of obscene pleasure from every fascist south of the Rio Grande: finally in Argentina there was a strict 'New Order' that would stamp hard upon the international Communist-Jewish collusion. A little later, the mention of Timerman's case was enough to derail the nomination of Ronald Reagan's first nominee as undersecretary for human rights; a man who didn't seem to have grasped the point that neo-Nazism was a problem for American values. And Timerman's memoir, , was the book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the : the disappeared one or, to invest it with the more sinister and grisly past participle with which it came into the world, the one who has 'disappeared.' In the nuances of that past participle, many, many people vanished into a void that is still unimaginable. It became one of the keywords, along with or 'death squads,' of another arc, this time of radical evil, that spanned a whole subcontinent. Do you know why General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina was eventually sentenced? Well, do you? Because he sold the children of the tortured rape victims who were held in his private prison. I could italicize every second word in that last sentence without making it any more heart-stopping. And this subhuman character was boasted of, as a personal friend and genial host, even he had been removed from the office he had defiled, by none other than Henry Kissinger. So there was an almost hygienic effect in meeting, in a new Washington, as an envoy of an elected government, the son of the brave man who had both survived and exposed the Videla tyranny. human-rights death-squads jacobo-timerman henry-kissinger jorge-rafael-videla Christopher Hitchens
b33bda8 Dieting was cruel; it was an abuse of human rights. Yes, that's what it was, and she should not allow herself to be manipulated in this way. She stopped herself. Thinking like that was nothing more than coming up with excuses for breaking the diet. Mma Ramotswe was made of sterner stuff than that, and so she persisted. persisting human-rights humor Alexander McCall Smith
bac1995 Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them. If we do none of these, then we should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expresses itself in fear and hate and crime. prejudice human-rights institutional-abuse institutional-oppression Richard Wright
e17f2f9 If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing. human-rights humanity John Brunner
7020f5f I now want to examine a second major feature of Western civilization that derives from Christianity. This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the 'affirmation of ordinary life.' It is the simple idea that ordinary people are fallible, and yet these fallible people matter. In this view, society should organize itself in order to meet their everyday concerns, which are elevated into a kind of spiritual framework. The nuclear family, the idea of limited government, the Western concept of the rule of law, and our culture's high emphasis on the relief of suffering all derive from this basic Christian understanding of the dignity of fallible human beings. human-rights Dinesh D'Souza
889d848 For the history of the American Negro is unique also in this: that the question of his humanity, and of his rights therefore as a human being, became a burning one for several generations of Americans, so burning a question that it ultimately became one of those used to divide the nation. racism human-rights history blacks whites american-history race-relations race rights James Baldwin
f70c3d3 Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can't life and thrive on anger. It lives and thrives on the dogged pursuit of justice. human-rights advocacy anger justice Ursula K. Le Guin
539321f "Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general--but to choose to use the vague expression "human rights" is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human." human-rights women gender-equality sexism Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
e70f4ed "Hay gente que pregunta: "?Por que usar la palabra "feminista"? ?Por que no decir simplemente que crees en los derechos humanos o algo parecido?". Pues porque no seria honesto. Esta claro que el feminismo forma parte de los derechos humanos en general, pero elegir usar la expresion generica "derechos humanos" supone negar el problema especifico y particular del genero. Es una forma de fingir que no han sido las mujeres quienes se han visto excluidas durante siglos. Es una forma de negar que el problema del genero pone a las mujeres en el punto de mira." human-rights women-s-rights derechos-humanos feminismo Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
34c5f25 "What have been called "women's issues" are freedom issues. Body control. The right of human beings to control their own bodies is a freedom issue. Respect. The right of human beings to be treated institutionally with respect as a human being is a freedom issue." human-rights freedom respect George Lakoff
c30de86 In one form or the other, the quest for human dignity has proved to be one of the most propulsive elements for wars, civil strife and willing sacrifice. Yet the entitlement to dignity, enshrined among the 'human rights', does not aspire to being the most self-evident, essential need for human survival, such as food, or physical health. Compared to that other candidate for the basic impulse of human existence - self-preservation - it may even be deemed self-indulgent. human-rights existence self-preservation Wole Soyinka
7c0a79e Vosotros los jovenes no sabeis apreciar las cosas, proseguia. No sabeis lo que hemos tenido que pasar para lograr que esteis donde estais. Miralo, es el quien pela las zanahorias. ?Sabeis cuantas vidas de mujeres, cuantos cuerpos de mujeres han tenido que arrollar los tanques para llegar a esta situacion? La cocina es mi pasatiempo predilecto, decia Luke. Disfruto cocinando. Un pasatiempo muy original, replicaba mi madre. No tienes por que darme explicaciones. En otros tiempos no te habrian permitido tener semejante pasatiempo, te habrian llamado marica. Vamos, madre, le decia yo. No discutamos por tonterias. Tonterias, repetia amargamente. Las llamas tonterias. Veo que no entiendes. No entiendes nada de lo que estoy diciendo. human-rights puritanismo women-rights totalitarism totalitarismo feminismo puritanism Margaret Atwood
ff93de4 "There's the claim that the only progress made is in posing problems that scientists can answer. That philosophy never has the means to answer problems--it's just biding its time till the scientists arrive on the scene. You hear this quite often. There is, among some scientists, a real anti-philosophical bias. The sense that philosophy will eventually disappear. But there's a lot of philosophical progress, it's just a progress that's very hard to see. It's very hard to see because we see prejudice progress human-rights science philosophy animal-rights bigotry thinking thought Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
fb64e39 Six men control almost all the media in the United States--book publishing, magazines, television, movie studios, newspapers, and radio. They are not friendly toward feminism, which has almost disappeared from the surface of our society. You will almost never see a feminist column on an op-ed page, a feminist article in a magazine, or newspaper, actual (not satirized) feminist ideas on television or in the movies. Only magazines & radio controlled by feminists--and these are few and not well-funded--offer information on the feminist perspective. This might be understandable if feminism were a wild-eyed manic philosophy. But it is a belief, a politics, based on one simple fact: women are human beings who matter as much as men. That is all that feminism claims. As human beings, women have the right to control their own bodies, to walk freely in the world, to train their minds and bodies, and to love and hate at will. Only those who wish to continue to coerce women into a servant/slave class for men cannot accept this principle. human-rights feminism women-s-rights television women politics inequality magazines media newspapers preface radio movies gender sexism Marilyn French
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