Human Dignity Quotes - Page 6

• In the anarchist milieu, communism, individualism, collectivism, mutualism and all the intermediate and eclectic programmes are simply the ways considered best for achieving freedom and solidarity in economic life; the ways believed to correspond more closely with justice and freedom for the distribution of the means of production and the products of labour among men. Bakunin was an anarchist, and he was a collectivist, an outspoken enemy of communism because he saw in it the negation of freedom and, therefore, of human dignity.

  Errico Malatesta

  Mean, Men, Justice

  Errico Malatesta (2015). “Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta”, p.22, PM Press

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• Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

  Elie Wiesel

  Inspirational, Life, Women

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.170, Schocken

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• Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.

  Bernard Baruch

  Lying, Race, Agreement

  Bernard Baruch's Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946.

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• When you do stand-up, you're just concerned with trying to leave with some semblance of human dignity at the end of your performance.

  John Oliver

  Trying, Dignity, Ends

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• Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit. People, worldwide, hunger for the right of self-determination, for those inalienable rights that make for human dignity and progress. America must remain freedom's staunchest friend, for freedom is our best ally and it is the world's only hope to conquer poverty and preserve peace. Every blow we inflict against poverty will be a blow against its dark allies of oppression and war. Every victory for human freedom will be a victory for world peace.

  Ronald Reagan

  Determination, War, Dark

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 21 January 1985, Rotunda of the Capitol, Washington D.C.

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• Civilized people - Muslims, Christians and Jews - all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.

  John Ashcroft

  Christian, People, Scary

  Remarks addressed to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, February 19, 2002.

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• In the Bible poverty is a scandalous condition inimical to human dignity and therefore contrary to the will of God.

  Gustavo Gutiérrez

  Poverty, Dignity, Gods Will

  Gustavo Gutiérrez (1988). “A theology of liberation: history, politics, and salvation”

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• In a revolutionary age talk of equality may well have represented a passion to provide full human dignity to those who had previously been denied it by systems of political and economic domination; but in the present age it softens the spiritual requirements that are an essential ingredient in human dignity. Thus the slogans of equality serve not so much to elevate individuals to the dignity of being human as to free them from the responsibility of rising to this vocation.

  Merold Westphal

  Spiritual, Responsibility, Passion

  Merold Westphal (2010). “Kierkegaard's Critique of Reason and Society”, p.49, Penn State Press

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• Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.

  Hyman Rickover

  Mean, Winning, Class

  "Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life". Second Annual Morgenthau Memorial Lecture, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 1982.

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• In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the . . . West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens.

  Ronald Reagan

  Running, Freedom, Home

  Address to British Parliament, delivered 8 June 1982, Royal Gallery at the Palace of Westminster, London

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• Without the values at the core of Christianity and other world religions, without moral norms that have been shaped over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question.

  Vladimir Putin

  World Religions, Other Worlds, People

  Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, en.kremlin.ru. September 19, 2013.

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• success in L.A. is completely arbitrary. One day you're the brilliant genius of life, the next day people act like there's a bad smell when you approach. Lots of expensive, late-model cars are offered in the L.A. Times every day by people who have suddenly begun to smell bad. The stakes are just too high for human dignity.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Next Day, Smell, People

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• The worst part about prostitution is that you're obliged not to sell sex only, but your humanity. That's the worst part of it: that what you're selling is your human dignity. Not really so much in bed, but in accepting the agreement - in becoming a bought person.

  Kate Millett

  Sex, Agreement, Humanity

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• If our free society is to endure, those who govern must recognize human dignity and accept the enforcement of constitutional limitations on their power conceived by the Framers . . . . Such recognition will not come from a technical understanding of the organs of government, or the new forms of wealth they administer. It requires something different, something deeper-a personal confrontation with the wellsprings of our society.

  William J. Brennan

  Government, Understanding, Different

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• We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity — a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.

  Nelson Mandela

  Heart, Black And White, People

  Presidential Inaugural Speech, delivered 10 May 1994, Pretoria, South Africa

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• The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Sex, Honesty, Ignorance

  "Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male". Book by Alfred Kinsey, 1948.

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• We must teach our children that the preservation of liberty, and of an order of society conducive to human dignity, requires that a free people retain the moral and material means to discipline its own government, should the temptation to tyranny take root.

  Alan Keyes

  Children, Mean, Government

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• This generation is different. They are not as interested in chasing money or material possessions. I believe that this generation is more interested in seeking social change and a more just society than any generation since those that brought about the civil rights movement and the struggles for human dignity of the 1960s.

  Andrew Aydin

  Believe, Struggle, Rights

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Suffering, Way, Taste

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• Islam does give human dignity, certainly. The point I wanted to make is that it is great foolishness to try to impose our notions of democracy. They have their own traditions.

  Bernard Lewis

  Giving, Islam, Democracy

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• The Supreme Court has also issued and never reversed a number of decisions that are repugnant to the Constitution's vision of human dignity and equality.

  Sam Brownback

  Numbers, Decision, Vision

  Sam Brownback's speech at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Judge Samuel Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court, www.washingtonpost.com. January 9, 2006.

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• Primarily, Warsaw and Brussels share the central basic values of the EU: human dignity, democracy, and the religious freedom of every single human being. We believe in these values.

  Jaroslaw Kaczynski

  Religious, Believe, Democracy

  Source: uk.businessinsider.com

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• It is the system itself that, that is incapable of producing freedom for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans. Just like a chicken can't lay a duck egg, a chicken can't lay a duck egg, because the system of the chicken isn't constructed in the way to produce a duck egg. And just as that chicken system can't produce, is not capable to, of producing a duck egg, the political and economic system of this country is absolutely incapable of producing freedom and justice and equality and human dignity for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Eggs, Two

  Source: nyx.uky.edu

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• India has sanctioned phenomenal injustices for years and years and years. And normalized it. There is no understanding of what it means to be born into a class that has been denied basic human dignity for generations and generations.

  Sarnath Banerjee

  Mean, Years, Class

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• What happens when we examine the claims made for Western liberalism as a universalizing ideology of tolerance, human dignity, equality, and compassion is the fact that the patron saint of modern liberalism, John Stuart Mill, thought that barbarian peoples like the Indians were unfit for self-rule.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Compassion, Self, Tolerance

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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