William S. Burroughs Quotes

In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.

Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others.

The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.

I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

For most of the world, civil and political rights... come as luxuries that are far away in the future.

In 1962, when I was 19, I visited India. With introductions from people involved in the U.S. civil rights movement, I was able to visit with several of the leading Gandhians there. The hundred-to-one difference in average per capita income between America and India at the time was a stark reality for the people who became my friends there.

I have a lot of interests in global issues, as you know, humanity, inequity, arms control, and I continue to be active on all these issues.

Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries.

Peace should be understood in a human way - in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

One half of the world's people live on less than two dollars a day. This should concern our national security policy as well as our conscience.

While I'm optimistic about the direction the world is headed, generally, I think there is a need for constant vigilance and pressure on repressive governments.

We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt.

The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.

The third world is important then, because it is made up its human beings, human beings who possess the same nature we do, people who are capable of suffering and desire and, even as we suffer and desire, people who are condemned to a shabby, deprived and disease ridden existence, and these are people for whom we have a moral and religious obligation to care about.

As the Cold War melts into history, our first concern should be the preservation and extension of human rights and democracy.

Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life.

I would never call myself an expert on geopolitics. I'm not studied in it. But what I do know is what's right and wrong in terms of treatment of people.

I think that the world has largely ignored Belize and the political situation and the plight of its people because it's one of the smallest countries and, in terms of the world economy, one of the least significant.

We need to have a clear moral vision for both our foreign policy, and economic policy and policy on racial justice.

I believe the conservatives need to push back against the ungrateful habit of blaming the West by pointing repeatedly to the self-inflicted wounds of the Third World.

To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.

Let us never allow ourselves to think that poverty is an excuse for an invitation to totalitarianism, and if we should be tempted to think as much, let us remind ourselves that totalitarianism not only extinguishes liberty but institutionalises poverty as well

You need to think about the system that you live in and the comforts that you have. But the comforts that you have that are causing the discomforts of a massive amount of people around the world.

A time comes when silence is betrayal.

Our concern for human rights comes to the fore when there are gross violations of human decencies. Then other countries, including China, must recognize that this affects the American attitude towards their country. But towards what precise institutions will it evolve? I think we ought to leave something to history.