Steven Patrick Morrissey Quotes

...if our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British empire would not have been made.

The Iraqi people are suffering just as if they were still under Saddam.

Iran's continued, widespread persecution of ethnic minorities, human rights defenders and political prisoners is a disgrace and stands as a shameful indictment of Iran's leaders.

The cruelties committed against the Hottentots exceed everything that is said about it in Cape Town or what can be imagined.

The English have found to their detriment how impolitic it is to oppress their subjects.

The malignity and inhumanity of the Greek military authorities are undisguised.

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured, but we can reduce the number of tortured children.

Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government.

… these English masters who, after placing me in a position which forced me to get down on my knees and elbows to eat, are now depriving me of food and light and giving me chains and a Bible. I am not complaining of the penalties which my masters inflict on me -- it is my job to suffer -- but I insist that I have the right to inform the world of the treatment to which I am subjected

Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government ... The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done

Even the worst dictator, there is not a single one of them who would say "Oh yes, I violate human rights." They all claim "oh no, we respect human rights" even when they are doing the most egregious things.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.

If people say that here and there someone has been taken away and maltreated, I can only reply: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity. If you can make them sufficiently uncomfortable, they frequently respond by doing what you need them to do in the spirit of setting people free or ceasing arrests.

How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro.

Abu Ghraib, as bad as it was, can't be compared to what Saddam was doing to people.

The president, who finds so much to complain about in other areas of the world, apparently saw nothing wrong in recognizing a Communist regime that has killed more people in its short history of control over the teeming millions of that great country than any other collection of dictators or tyrants in the history of the world.

The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.

Saddam Hussein is being treated the exact opposite of the way his regime treated those he imprisoned and tortured simply for expressing their opinions. And so I reject that.

There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.

There are several dozen political prisoners in Russia. When I cite that number people are often very surprised. They often think there are more. Well - there are hundreds of thousands of people who haven't had a fair trial, who are victims of the political system. But in the Amnesty International sense of the word, most of them are not political prisoners because they are not going to prison for protesting.

It's hard to think what should make your blood boil more - what happened to Billy Ray or what didn't happen to those who abused him. It's something we can't ignore.

The Cherokees tried to do everything within the law and wished only to live in peace on their own lands. Yet they were cheated out of their birthright and treated as if they were less than human.

My mind became agitated with the enquiry - why a nation, separated from us by an ocean more than three thousand miles in extent, should endeavor to enforce on us plans of subjugation, the most unnatural in themselves, unjust, inhuman in their operations, and unpractised even by the uncivilized savages of the wilderness?

The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people.