Human Rights Quotes

This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ...
Be vigilant about your rights.
Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small,
no matter how marginal, are violated,
your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History,
University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks
of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series

I'm actually starting to like more and more people
who have convictions that are unpopular.
Now at what point does an unpopular conviction
interfere with your own human rights?
Forced female circumcision, for instance.
The Catholic Church's stance on contraception.
The list goes on. You know, God has some really weird kids,
and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.
- Bono

The human race has one really effective weapon,
and that is laughter.
- Mark Twain

Wherever there is a human being,
there is an opportunity for a kindness.
- Seneca

We may have different religions, different
languages, different colored skin,
but we all belong to one human race.
- Kofi Annan

When will our consciences grow so tender
that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
- Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can find inner peace except by working,
not in a self-centered way, but for the whole human family.
- Peace Pilgrim

There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely
as if they had never happened before.
- Willa Cather

The greatest discovery of any generation
is that a human being
can alter his life by
altering his attitude
- William James

The greatest force in the human body
is the natural drive of the body to heal itself -
but that force in not independent of the belief system.
Everything begins with belief.
What we believe is the most powerful option of all.
- Norman Cousins

We can live without religion and meditation,
but we cannot survive without human affection.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars,
or sailed to an uncharted land,
or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
- Helen Keller

It is against everything we stand for to take a human life.
Making an exception to that code is a bleak thing.
- Sam, from Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer

The first step in the evolution of ethics
is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.
- Albert Schweitzer

Pause to appreciate the beauty around you.
Whether rainbow or butterfly,
mountain or tree, painting or poem -
whether crafted by nature or by a human hand -
beauty adds a magical element to life
that surpasses logic and science.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing
a human being to a purpose.
- Albert Schweitzer

Man must evolve for all human conflict,
a method which rejects
revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy

My own gratitude list begins with health, family, friends,
and the beauty around me - from the butterflies and rainbows,
to the dolphins, to the birds, to the works produced by the human hand.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Faith is the highest passion in a human being.
Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
- Soren Kierkegaard

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson

Each and every human being on Earth
has both the responsibility and the privilege
of viewing themselves as Divine beings
with the power to bring about peace.
- James Twyman

The problem with making assumptions
is that we believe they are the truth
- don Miguel Ruiz

Pay It Forward.
Gift future generations in proportion to your gratitude.
The nature of life is that we pay forward
our biological creation and nurture.
Our parents gift us with life and nurture,
and we gift our children with life and nurture.
While this much is essential to continued human existence,
choose to take "pay it forward" farther - much farther.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

As far as we can discern,
the sole purpose of human existence
is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
- Carl Jung

The human voice can never reach the distance
that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

We may have found a cure for most evils;
but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all,
the apathy of human beings.
- Helen Keller

The future has nothing in common with the past -
except natural laws and human nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The marvelous richness of human experience
would lose something of rewarding joy
if there were no limitations to overcome.
The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful
if there were no dark valleys to traverse.
- Helen Keller

The essence of being human is that one
does not seek perfection.
- George Orwell

When you open up to the ultimate,
immediately it pours into you.
You are no longer an ordinary human being -
you have transcended.
Your insight has become the
insight of the whole existence.
Now you are no longer separate -
you have found your roots.
- Osho

Action is no less necessary than thought
to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Sometimes our light goes out but
is blown into flame by another human being.
Each of us owes deepest thanks
to those who have rekindled this light.
- Albert Schweitzer

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious,
one should preserve it.
- Anais Nin

Whenever I look at a human face today,
I will say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
Whenever I look in the mirror today,
I will say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty,
the contemplation of mystery,
or the search of truth or perfection
is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession
of such days is fatal to human life.
- Lewis Mumford

Whenever I look at a human face,
I say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Any human being who is becoming independent of conditionings,
of religions, scriptures, prophets and messiahs, has arrived home.
He has found the treasure which was hidden in his own being.
- Osho

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong

For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something,
some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we?
If this is a chance to find out
even just a little part of that answer...
I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?
- the Jodie Foster movie Contact (1997)

The very essence of instinct is that
it's followed independently of reason.
- Charles Darwin

The more laws and order are made prominent,
the more thieves and robbers there will be.
- Lao Tzu

To deal with individual human needs
at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.
- Jimmy Carter

Nature and human life are as various
as our several constitutions.
Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
- Henry David Thoreau

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities...
because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
- Winston Churchill

The effort to understand the universe is one
of the very few things that lifts human life
a little above the level of farce,
and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
- Steven Weinberg

Being angry is as close as a human being
can come to experiencing hell on earth.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Music produces a kind of pleasure
which human nature cannot do without.
- Confucius

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy

The human spirit ranges across a truly amazing
diversity of experiences and emotions -
the highest peaks and the lowest valleys.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
- Pema Chodron

Every human life contains a potential,
if that potential is not fulfilled,
then that life was wasted...
- Carl Jung

There comes a pause, for human strength will not endure
to dance without cessation;
and everyone must reach the point at length of absolute prostration.
- Lewis Carroll

Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval -
a thing which, to the general run of the human race,
is more dreaded than wolves and death.
- Mark Twain

All that is valuable in human society
depends upon the opportunity for development
accorded the individual.
- Albert Einstein

Human salvation lies in the hands
of the creatively maladjusted.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you fear making anyone mad,
then you ultimately probe for
the lowest common denominator of human achievement.
- Jimmy Carter

It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human.
I am a woman first of all.
- Anais Nin

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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