Basic Human Rights Quotes

Old ideas die hard. We’ve had thousands of years of women having almost no rights. Parts of the world are in a struggle toward very basic human rights for women, and most of the world isn’t even there yet. And it’s going to take a long time to change these attitudes.

I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan.

Just because a child’s parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.

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.

Those of us who decided to work for democracy in Burma made our choice in the conviction that the danger of standing up for basic human rights in a repressive society was preferable to the safety of a quiescent life in servitude

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day.

It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.

Life is not a matter of place, things or comfort; rather, it concerns the basic human rights of family, country, justice and human dignity.

The promises of Fidel Castro’s so-called revolution of pluralism and democracy, were and continue to be a false promise and a betrayal of all basic human rights.

I’m not a feminist,’ some women say sternly as they march off to work where equal opportunity legislation protects them … Women who say they are not feminists and act like individuals with basic human rights have just got their terminology wrong.

The challenging of repression by a new generation of activists – from Malala Yousafzai to Pussy Riot – across the globe reminded us how many women are still fighting for basic human rights. Our great-grandmothers’ struggle in all its shocking detail seemed so relevant.

Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings… their importance, their dignity… and agreed that was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.

Their prejudice allowed white Southerners to look the other way when blacks were denied their most basic human rights, and it encouraged the worst of them to engage in unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence.

In a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. Never let fear prevent you from doing right.

If you don’t want women to do whatever they need to do then you must provide them with food, you must provide them with shelter and their basic human rights.

We also intend to deal with the issue of incorporating basic human rights into our new constitution.