top of page
Rights Quotes


"Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim."


"If you want my opinion, I say that this is a state based on occupation, that has usurped the rights of others."


"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights."


"We wish to be citizens of the United States or citizens of Puerto Rico. In either case, with all the inherent rights of a natural sovereignty."


"It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments."


"I have always believed that I should have had no difficulty in causing my rights to be respected."


"In Uzbekistan, hundreds of protesters were recently killed under the corrupt regime of President Karimov in what human rights groups are calling a massacre."


"The ones who were negotiating are now on the front line of this intifada, because they found that the negotiations didn't give them the minimum of their rights."


"All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights."


"And occasionally some of the nations that will be partners in this would probably not be, in terms of passing a pure human rights check, have everything going for them that you would like to have."


"I am aware that in presenting myself as the advocate of the Indians and their rights, I shall stand very much alone."


"When you consider what Tony Blair was saying about liberty, human rights and that sort of thing, it would be terribly revolutionary to sell the speeches he and Jack Straw made in 1994."


""Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights."


"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot."


"What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights."


"Cultural variety is always worth striving for, but must never precede the declaration of human rights."


"Our natural rights come from an authority beyond the petty rule of man."


"The treatise found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them."


"In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many."


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


"In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties."



"The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will."


"A human being can only take so much when their basic rights as a citizen of the earth are being denied to them " or sold at a high cost."



"But we must create in each person a sense of responsibility in order that each one of us can have the right to enjoy all his rights."


"The only way to do the human rights thing is to do the right thing medically."


"In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of "the Haves" over the human rights of "the Have Nots" is inevitably called into serious question."


"I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights."


"When you sign with a label, they do insist upon certain rights, and if you have a competent attorney, your rights will be protected."


"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot."


"It should be made clear that religious freedom DOES NOT include the right to persecute others, nor the right to take away their humanity and equal treatment before the law."


"What we don't have a right to is healthcare, housing, or handouts. We don't have those rights."


"To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense."


"The only ground on which a neutral State can claim respect at the hands of belligerents is, that, so far as she is concerned, their rights are protected."


"The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right."


"Without amendments we would never even have had the Bill of Rights."


"There are significant human rights abuses in China. In some areas, the situation is worse today than in the past. In other areas, there have been improvements. We will recognize the latter, and be critical of the former."


"The issue of human rights is one of the most fundamental human issues and also one of the most sensitive and controversial."


"However, if the religions in essence merely repeat statements from the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, such a Declaration becomes superfluous; an ethic is more than rights."
bottom of page