John McCain Quotes

It is hard to know exactly when the Arab Spring, a phrase used to describe the beginning of the Arab peoples' demand for democracy and human-rights reform, started.

The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

A country that goes out of its way to imprison the innocent has no business preaching democracy to the world.

But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.

It is not only our right as members of the global human family to protest when our brothers and sisters are being treated brutally, but it is also our duty to do whatever we can to hep them.

I've never seen a single demonstration in Pakistan, in the streets of Gaza, in the West Bank, in which the people have come out with signs saying, "Please give us better roads. Please give us new prenatal clinics. Please give us a new sewage system." I'm sure they'd like those things, but it's not what they demand in the demonstrations. In the demonstrations, they talk about justice, they talk about an end to Israeli occupation.

We are going to have to be very careful that we give people the hope that freedom is actually better than unfreedom.

If we look to the south, to Iran, which cannot be "accused" of excess democratic zeal - it goes without saying that the unstable situation does not prepare the ground for a democratic development.

The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world and not follow it. Other nations have been more outspoken. So, I hope that we'll hear more of this because young men and women taking to the streets in Tehran need our support. The signs are in English. They're basically asking for us to speak up on their behalf.

We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighers did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany.

My whole thing is I don't take from Castro being an intelligent man as long as he is doing the thing that needs to be done. But the thing is at the end of the day you're not bettering the island. You're only making it worse. So, for me it's just making sure that people have the right to speak their minds and have an opportunity in life to better their life.

A just society will appear less spectacular, and less clearly defined, than a society with totalitarian leadership, theocratic goals.

In Canada, the U.S. and most of Europe it may be easy to take political stands, this is something for which you can be forced to pay with your life, or your freedom, in many other parts of the world, from Iran to Russia to Pakistan to China.

Does John Kerry have to give them [Iran] every little thing? You'll pass some sanctions for human rights and missiles, and I'll grudgingly sign on.

If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right!

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a good example of how people, who are robbed of their right to vote, can protest and put an end to dictatorship.

To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.

During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.... The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy.

Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.

Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary.

We must now, in the 21st century, protect democracy, one which rests on fundamental rights for all, regardless of skin color, gender, race or religion. Nothing less than that is at stake.

I believe I have an important message and we are fighting the same fight, which is the fight for freedom in Australia, in Holland and in Europe.