Human Rights Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old human rights quotes, human rights sayings, and human rights proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities. Pope Francis
To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. Nelson Mandela
Life is not a matter of place, things or comfort; rather, it concerns the basic human rights of family, country, justice and human dignity. Imelda Marcos
Some values must be universal, like human rights and the equal worth of every human being. Bjorn Ulvaeus
Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood. Jimmy Carter
The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. John F. Kennedy
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave. Frederick Douglass
Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person. Madeleine L'Engle
Wherever men and 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
Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Martin Luther King Jr.
The connection between women's human rights, gender equality, socioeconomic development and peace is increasingly apparent. Mahnaz Afkhami
In the future, human rights will be increasingly a universal criterion for designing ethical systems. Mahnaz Afkhami
The right to development is the measure of the respect of all other human rights.That should be our aim: a situation in which all individuals are enabled to maximize their potential, and to contribute to the evolution of society as a whole. Kofi Annan
Those who today still feel a sense of impotence can do something: they can support Amnesty International. They can help it to stand up for freedom and justice. Peter Benenson
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. Ramsey Clark
Human rights education is much more than a lesson in schools or a theme for a day; it is a process to equip people with the tools they need to live lives of security and dignity. Kofi Annan
The evolution of the human rights movement clearly illustrates humanity's ongoing struggle toward creating a better world. Robert Alan Silverstein
The right to development is the measure of the respect of all other human rights.That should be our aim: a situation in which all individuals are enabled to maximize their potential, and to contribute to the evolution of society as a whole. Kofi Annan
Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below. Roger Nash Baldwin
Everyone has a right to peaceful coexistence, the basic personal freedoms, the alleviation of suffering, and the opportunity to lead a productive life... Jimmy Carter
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. Abigail Adams
Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. James Baldwin
What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that's the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand. Tony Blair
The right to development is the measure of the respect of all other human rights. That should be our aim: a situation in which all individuals are enabled to maximize their potential, and to contribute to the evolution of society as a whole. Boutros Boutros-Ghali
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings. Pearl S. Buck
You are a human being. You have rights inherent in that reality. You have dignity and worth that exists prior to law. Lyn Beth Neylon
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. Abraham Lincoln
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself. Robert Ingersoll
It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home. Carl T. Rowan
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled -- because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance. Friedrich Nietzsche
The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot. William Ellery Channing
A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered. Felix Adler
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. Noam Chomsky
Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood. Jimmy Carter
And we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought for freedom's soul? Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole? John Boyle O'Reilly
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory. Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights. Bishop Desmond Tutu
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. Horace Greeley
No man is above the law and no man below it. Theodore Roosevelt
Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit. Victor Hugo
Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. James Baldwin
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Emma Goldman
In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself. Oscar Wilde
"Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights Dag Hammarskjold
We are already living the experiment of anarchy at the world level, we need to continue to build the consensus of individuals who agree to shift to the paradigm of legal structures at the world level. Human rights law establishes a basis for peaceful coexistence. David Gallup
Many more people in the world are concerned about sports than human rights. Samuel P. Huntington
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is no law at all. Maximilien Robespierre
Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society. with all its combination of skill and force, can do in his favor. Edmund Burke
I am a Democrat in the largest sense of the word— a friend of equal rights and I believe that I live in a nation that has nothing to do with the graduation of human rights. Frederick Douglass
Human rights stand upon a common basis; and by all the reason that they are supported, maintained and defended, for one variety of the human family, they are supported, maintained and defended for all the human family; because all mankind has the same wants, arising out of a common nature. Frederick Douglass
Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. Benjamin Franklin
Either no member of the human race has any natural rights or they all have the same; and anyone who votes against the rights of another, of whatever religion, color, or sex, has from that moment denied his own. Marquis de Condorcet
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. Robert Green Ingersoll
Government laws are needed to give us civil rights and God is needed to make us civil. Ralph Washington Sockman
Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion. William Llolyd Garrison
They have rights who dare maintain them. James Russell Lowell
Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy. Proverbs 31:8-9
Woe to those who enact unjust decrees. who compose oppressive legislation to deny justice to the weak and to cheat the humblest of my people of fair judgment, to make widows their prey, and to rob the orphan. Isaiah 10:1-2
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well, please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. P.J. O'Rourke
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way around. Human rights invented human rights. Jimmy Carter
Even among the well-intentioned, the expansive, maleficent concept of justice is gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile discourse of "human rights." Arundhati Roy
It is becoming more than clear that violating human rights is an inherent and necessary part of the process of implementing a coercive and unjust political and economic structure in the world. Arundhati Roy
Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. Susan Brownell Anthony
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. Frederick Douglass
That the slave trade is contrary to the laws of God and to the rights of men. David Hartley
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter and to write it in the books of law. Lyndon Baines Johnson
Human rights in Africa, like Human rights in the Western world, are continually threatened by the interests of the ruling class. Rhoda Howard
I am a troublemaker because I believe in human rights strong enough to be one. Julius K. Nyerere
A right delayed is a right denied. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our hopes for a more just, safe, and peaceful world can only be achieved when there is universal respect for the inherent dignity and equal rights of all members of the human family. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. Elie Wiesel
In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes. Jane Goodall
All children should be taught to unconditionally accept, approve, admire, appreciate, forgive, trust, and ultimately, love their own person. Asa Don Brown
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. William Pitt the Younger