Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Liberty is not the unique right of Americans or even Westerners, but is mankind's right.

Liberty: I hope to see the time when all mankind will enjoy its blessings.

The Founders believed liberty came directly from God. With their knowledge of Scripture, they knew each child was made in the image of God. That is why everyone had dignity, value and worth.

The Universal Zulu Nation stands to acknowledge wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, and equality, peace, unity, love, and having fun, work, overcoming the negative through the positive, science, mathematics, faith, facts, and the wonders of God, whether we call him Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, or Jah.

Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

To re-establish faith in fundamental human rights, in the sanctity and ultimate value of human personality, in the equal rights of men and women of nations large and small.

Rights are useless unless the possessor knows about them.

While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, but none in themselves nobler than others. All are, in like degree, designed for freedom.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

In today's restless world, America needs to identify with the quest for universal human dignity, a dignity that embodies both freedom and democracy but also implies respect for cultural diversity.

No creed of religion can sustain unsullied purity, or support its high destination, which is mingled with the corruptions of human government. Christianity is in its essence, its doctrine, and its forms, republican. It teaches our descent from a common parent; in inculcates the natural equality in mankind; and it points to our origin and our end, to our nativity and our graves, to our immortal destinies, as illustrations of this impressive truth. But at an early period it was pressed into the service of the potentates of the earth; the unnatural union of church and state was consummated; and the scepter of Constantine was supported by the cross of Jesus. The light of knowledge was shut out from the general mass, and confined to the select organs of tyranny; and man was for ages enveloped in the thickest gloom of intellectual and moral darkness

In the name of heaven, with what face can we call ourselves the friends of equal freedom and the inherent rights of our species when we wantonly pass laws inimical to each; when we reject every opportunity of destroying, by silent, imperceptible degrees, the horrid fabric of individual bondage, reared by the mercenary hands of those from whom the sacred flame of liberty received no devotion?

The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class. It is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.

Young men in my day really stepped up... These were champions for freedom, equality, and justice for all human beings, and they were educated individuals that used their education and knowledge to represent their case.

We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal ... that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

This planet is for everyone, borders are for no one. It's all about freedom.

Has the God who made the white man and the black left any record declaring us a different species? Are we not sustained by the same power, supported by the same food. . . . And should we not then enjoy the same liberty. . .?

You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.

All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be content when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.

When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. The palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

Of course we desire education and we think it is a good thing, but you don't have to have education in order to know that you want certain fundamental rights, you have got aspirations, you have got acclaims. It has nothing to do with education whatsoever.

We mast show by our behavior that we believe in equality and justice and that our religion teaches faith and love and charity to our fellow men. Here is where each of us has a job to do that must be done at home, because we can lose the battle on the soil of the United States just as surely as we can lose it in any one of the countries of the world.

When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.