Human Dignity Quotes - Page 7

• Nationality started as something natural, but we should not be restrained by the old politics that make up these clear lines. It should have its own way of evolving. In some places, it will evolve slower and in others, faster. It's like the mountains, the ocean and the rivers. It has its own geological forms. Societies cannot be flat. But during change, human rights, human dignity and free speech have to be protected. Otherwise, we'll be going backward.

  Ai Weiwei

  Ocean, Mountain, Dignity

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Storytelling is very important. It is through context and relations that we understand the importance of human dignity. The concept means nothing as an abstraction. It's important for us to understand why people do the things they do, including the monsters - the suicide bomber and the war criminal. Understanding is not acceptance. Understanding is exploring the human psyche. If we want to put an end to violence, we need to have the sort of conversation I had with the teenage suicide bomber.

  Payam Akhavan

  Suicide, Teenage, War

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• The fight for education and justice is inseparable from the struggle for economic equality, human dignity and security, and the challenge of developing American institutions along genuinely democratic lines.

  Henry Giroux

  Struggle, Fighting, Justice

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• As Americans we place special emphasis on human dignity, justice and freedom. WE measure as good of bad that which meets these goals. Those high ideas have survived and flourished on this soil for two centuries since the Founding Fathers planted them because we have sustained a general public enlightenment through a free and universal public school system.

  Henry Clausen

  Father, School, Ideas

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• Love for others and respect for their rights and their human dignity, irrespective of who or what they are, no matter what religion - or none - that they choose to follow, will bring about real change and set in motion proper relationships. With such relationships built on equality and trust, we can work together on so many of the threats to our common humanity.

  Mairead Corrigan

  Real, Rights, Common Humanity

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• I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Passion, Liberty, Dignity

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Roger Boesche, James Toupin (1986). “Selected Letters on Politics and Society”, p.115, Univ of California Press

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• There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to people of white skin.... The more I feel like an American, the more the situation pains me.

  Albert Einstein

  Pain, White, People

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.312, Princeton University Press

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• Death in anonymity is the ultimate insult to human dignity.

  Kathy Reichs

  Dignity, Insult, Humans

  Kathy Reichs (2006). “Break No Bones: A Novel”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

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• Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.

  Leo Tolstoy

  War, Government, Common Sense

  Leo Tolstoy (graf) (1951). “The kingdom of God: and peace essays”

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• There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice...In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.

  Adrienne Rich

  Country, Art, Simple

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• Poverty arises and persists where corruption is endemic and enterprise is stifled, where basic fairness provided by the rule of law is absent. In such circumstances, poverty is an assault against human dignity, and in that assault lies the natural seed of human anger

  Colin Powell

  Lying, Law, Poverty

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• Hungry not only for bread - but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing - but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a home of bricks - but homeless because of rejection.

  Mother Teresa

  Love, Kindness, Home

  Mother Teresa (2001). “Mother Teresa: Essential Writings”

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• Human rights, human freedoms... and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world... while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God.

  Vaclav Havel

  Powerful, Patriotic, Rights

  "Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism" by Slavoj Zizek in London Review of Books, Volume 21, No. 21 (pp. 3-6), www.lrb.co.uk. October 28, 1999.

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• We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Government, Effort, Gold

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• The Church is the Church in her worship. Worship is not an optional extra, but is of the very life and essence of the Church. ...Man is never more truly man than when he worships God. He rises to all the heights of human dignity when he worships God, and all God's purpose in Creation and in Redemption are fulfilled in us as together in worship we are renewed in and through Christ, and in the name of Christ we glorify God.

  J. B. Torrance

  Men, Essence, Names

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• What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten—I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.

  Paulo Coelho

  Children, Vanity, Expression

  Paulo Coelho (1992). “The diary of a magus”, Harpercollins

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• The object of a comedy is not to correct morals or ridicule the vices of society; no, a comedy should depict the discrepancies between life and purpose, should be the fruit of bitter indignation aroused by the degradation of human dignity, should be sarcasm, and not an epigram, convulsive laughter and not an amused grin, should be written with bile and not diluted salt, in a word, it should embrace life in its highest significance.

  Vissarion Belinsky

  Laughter, Sarcasm, Discrepancies Between

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• The body's habituation to walking as normal stems from the good olddays. It was the bourgeois form of locomotion: physicaldemythologization, free of the spell of hieratic pacing, rooflesswandering, breathless flight. Human dignity insisted on the right towalk, a rhythm not extorted from the body by command or terror. Thewalk, the stroll, were private ways of passing time, the heritage ofthe feudal promenade in the nineteenth century.

  Theodor Adorno

  Heritage, Body, Way

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• America was born out of a desire for self-determination, a longing for the human dignity that only independence can bring.

  Maurice Saatchi

  Determination, Self, America

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• ...the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. [...] Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

  Pope Pius X

  Country, Powerful, True Friend

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• Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank.

  John F. Kennedy

  Loss, Voice, Suffering

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• Finally, it was about how people treat one another. It was about human dignity. We forced the employers to treat us as equals, to sit down and talk to us about the work we do, how we do it, and what we get paid for it. And I believe that the principles for which we fought in 1934 are still true and still useful. Whether your job is pushing a four-wheeler, or programming a computer, I don't know of any way for working people to win basic economic justice and dignity except by being organized into a solid, democratic union.

  Harry Bridges

  Jobs, Work, Believe

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• Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.

  Huey Newton

  Taken, Men, Gun

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• One area of law more than any other besmirches the constitutional vision of human dignity. . . . The barbaric death penalty violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its obligation to respect dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by< emulating his murderer. Capital punishment's fatal flaw is that it treats people as objects to be toyed with and discarded. . . . One day the Court will outlaw the death penalty. Permanently.

  William J. Brennan

  Law, Punishment, People

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• I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity.

  Joe Biden

  Children, Believe, Rights

  "Promises to Keep". Book by Joe Biden, 2008.

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