Elie Wiesel Quotes

You can't help but feel all the human-rights issues.

If women are being oppressed in Egypt or children are being forced to join armies in the Congo, for example, it is not only acceptable but wonderful for Americans to be concerned, outraged, and active.

I am angry that the international community has failed to find a permanent solution to the plight of the Rohingya. I am also ashamed that, in not speaking out loudly enough, we - humanitarians - have been complicit.

You don't need a passport to work on human rights.

Above all I ask leaders and legislators and the entire international community above all to confront the reality of those who have been displaced by force, with effective projects and new approaches in order to protect their dignity, to improve the quality of their life and to face the challenges that are emerging from modern forms of persecution, oppression and slavery.

No human being should ever have to fear for his own life because of political or religious beliefs. We are all in this together, my friends, the rich, the poor, the red, white, black, brown and yellow. We share responsibility for Mother Earth and those who live and breathe upon her ..never forget that.

There's one place where (Fidel Castro’s) Cuba stands out head and shoulders above the rest – that is in its love for human rights and liberty!

It is very deplorable that North Korea still does not uphold human rights, which are universal values.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

There's a great op-ed piece by Kurt Johnson, who runs The List Project, that I recommend everyone read. He was talking about how he's been trying to get out of Iraq who were our allies, who are now subject to torture, and their families are being killed because of their alliance to the United States.

Two presidents pursued human rights policies that were serious and effective: Reagan and George W. Bush. They understood that American support for human rights activists is a moral imperative for us and also makes the world safer for us.

The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.

If there's a clear genocide somewhere, don't we really want to positively impact that kind of a situation? Isn't that what we're all about? Isn't that what we've always been about?

So what we're talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we're facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

What the Serbs are doing is an international crime. What the world is not doing is also an international crime.

A robust democratic society depends on its ability to uphold and protect religious freedom -- a basic right inherent in the very dignity of the human person. It is therefore essential to safeguard citizens who belong to religious minorities from acts of violence. Such protection not only accords with human dignity but also contributes to the common good.

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

I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize.

Stability is a reasonable foreign policy goal, but not at the expense of human rights.

Crimes against human rights, never confessed and never publicly denounced, are a poison which destroys the possibility of a friendship between nations.

The thing about talking about human rights is that when one bears in mind the sharp end of it, one does not want to worry too much about semantics.

Where are the gains for religious freedom and human rights to justify all the bombings, invasions and wars we have conducted in the lands from Libya to Pakistan - to justify the losses we have endured and the death and suffering we have inflicted?

Big global players like China need to do a better job of respecting human rights.

It cannot be right in a world of increasing human progress - whether in medicine, space exploration or renewable energy - that so many people are denied the most basic human rights.

We live in a world where over 160 million people are displaced because of climate change or war, and they have no rights and no protection, and not enough countries or people around the world are helping them.