Human Rights Quotes - Page 10

• Human rights must be protected by the rule of law, and there can never be occasions where human rights can be neglected or ignored or the rule of law set aside.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Rights, Law, Ignored

  Source: www.voanews.com

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• Human rights and rule of law are inseparably connected.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Rights, Law, Connected

  Source: www.voanews.com

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• To me, my version of feminism, it's co-extensive with human rights and democracy. It's just part of the same fight for everyone being free, and having autonomy and dignity. It's not pitting one gender against another, it's not saying anything is better, it's just clearing away injustice.

  Naomi Wolf

  Fighting, Rights, Democracy

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• We do need great change in Burma. We are trying to build a new society, a society where basic human rights are respected, and where our people enjoy all the benefits of democratic institutions.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Rights, People, Trying

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Moves toward sovereignty in Iraq stimulate pressures first for human rights among the bitterly repressed Shi'ite population but also toward some degree of autonomy. You can imagine a kind of a loose Shi'ite alliance in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the United States. And much worse, although Europe can be intimidated by the United States, China can't. It's one of the reasons, the main reasons, why China is considered a threat. We're back to the Mafia principle.

  Noam Chomsky

  Moving, Independent, Rights

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The idea of universal human rights may not seem as weird to some people as the idea of a personal God, but it is still a metaphysical idea that liberalism, at least as we know it, couldn't really survive without.

  Ross Douthat

  Ideas, Rights, People

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• I see a violation of human rights not in the mere fact that people don't have enough to eat and that they are very vulnerable, but I see it in the fact that the economic institutional order of the world is associated with this very persistent poverty and that different institutional arrangements at the supranational level could stop and even reverse the slide towards ever-greater income disparities.

  Thomas Pogge

  Rights, Order, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We should condemn as unjust a global economic order that leads to ever-increasing economic disparities - provided this effect is foreseeable and provided it is also avoidable through some alternative institutional design that would foreseeably lead to much less poverty and inequality. Those involved in designing or imposing the existing rules are collectively responsible for the resulting excess deprivations and human rights deficits.

  Thomas Pogge

  Rights, Order, Design

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech".

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Play, Rights, Perspective

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• Human rights and international criminal law both illustrate the contradictory potential of international law. On one level, the imposition of human rights norms is a restraint on interventionary diplomacy, especially if coupled with respect for the legal norm of self-determination. But on another level, the protection of human rights creates a pretext for intervention as given approval by the UN Security Council in the form of the R2P (responsibility to protect) norm, as used in the 2011 Libyan intervention. The same applies with international criminal accountability.

  Richard A. Falk

  Determination, Responsibility, Self

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• There are degrees of incompatibility, and there are more factors relevant to upholding democracy and human rights than the operation of neoliberal markets. Perhaps this point can be initially made by reference to the decline of democracy and the erosion of human rights within the United States since the 9/11 attacks.

  Richard A. Falk

  Rights, Erosion, Democracy

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The deliberate weakening of the labour movement by the machinations of market fundamentalists, gaining momentum during the periods when Margaret Thatcher led the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan governed in the United States, contributed to the decline of human rights.

  Richard A. Falk

  Rights, Labour Movement, Kingdoms

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The systemic incompatibility between free-market capitalism and the quality of democratic life and respect for human rights has to be modified to take account of such contextual variables as wartime, security threats, and the societal balance between entrepreneurial and working classes.

  Richard A. Falk

  Class, Rights, Quality

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Just as it wouldn't be right to only to have an economic dialogue with China, equally you shouldn't restrict your dialogue solely to issues around, say, human rights. You can raise all those issues, and that is what reflects a mature discussion. So I don't think essentially we have to choose between being partners in China's economic development and being proud defenders of British values.

  George Osborne

  Thinking, Issues, Rights

  Source: www.economist.com

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• [Professional accountants ] should be encouraging companies to enhance their green credentials by switching to renewables, and to respect core labor standards and human rights.

  Kofi Annan

  Rights, Green, Switching

  Source: www.accaglobal.com

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• [Refugees] cannot be stopped, but they can and must be managed better, more humanely, protecting migrants' human rights whilst accepting states' rights to control their borders.

  Kofi Annan

  Rights, Migrants, Borders

  Source: www.accaglobal.com

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• Human rights is a big important part of how to prevent conflict in the first place if we focus on how the governments are treating their people.

  Nikki Haley

  Rights, Government, People

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Good, healthy democratic societies are built on three pillars: there's peace and stability, economic development, and respect for rule of law and human rights. But often, we take stability - peace in terms of security and economic activity - to mean a country is doing well. We forget the third and important pillar of rule of law and respect for human rights, because no country can long remain prosperous without that third pillar.

  Kofi Annan

  Country, Mean, Rights

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• We oppress people, we make our victims small wherever they are, whether they are a black girl in a rural community in, say, America or Britain, or whether it's something happening out there in one of the countries of conflict. I mean Sri Lanka, the human rights abuse there is appalling.

  Roma Tearne

  Girl, Country, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In Burma, we are being told by so-called experts and some governments that we must be patient and that there can be incremental change through Parliament. The UN did this, and failed spectacularly, and while they did, the human rights situation got worse. The dictatorship ignored the UN and international community, making not a single concession. Now we are being told again these Parliaments are new, we should engage with them and if improved they can bring positive change. I don't place any hope in that.

  Zoya Phan

  Rights, Government, Community

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I would like to see an agreement that recognizes that we live on the same planet and that some interests, such as human rights, must be universal and that all religions must be respected.

  Ninian Smart

  Rights, Agreement, Planets

  Source: www.scottlondon.com

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• US law and international human rights law have radically diverged in the past years in terms of the recognition of indigenous people's rights. International human rights law now looks at not whether or not the tribes have formal ownership or legal title in a Western legal conception might have it, but rather they look at the tribe's historical connection to that land.

  Robert A. Williams, Jr.

  Past, Historical, Recognition

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Rights, Blood, Liberty

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.96, Penguin

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• A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Brother, Motivation

  His Holiness The Dalai Lama (2013). “Kindness, Clarity, and Insight”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

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• We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.

  John Pilger

  Peace, Memories, Struggle

  Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech in University of Sydney, November 4, 2009.

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