Wisdom Quotations

Human Rights

Abigail Adams:
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Alex Carey:
... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Australian social scientist, quoted by Noam Chomsky in World Orders Old and New

Aung San Suu Kyi:
Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.

Eugene V. Debs:
Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.

1908 speech

HH the Dalai Lama:
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Noam Chomsky:
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

Noam Chomsky:
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Paulo Freire:
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

Pearl S. Buck:
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Robert F. Kennedy:
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.

Saul Alinsky:
Last guys don't finish nice.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago (Philippines):
I shall be honored to go to jail. Under a dictatorship, the detention cell is a place of honor.

Thomas Jefferson:
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Vaclav Havel:
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.