Judith Butler Quotes

In doing their work, they [NGOs -- Non-governmental organizations] often end up undermining the government. They hire away its best people, and more fundamentally, their prominence teaches citizens to look to them for service rather than to pressure the government to provide them. This tension between wanting to replace an ineffective state and trying not to undermine it further is a common one faced by outside actors…

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

I wanted myself. I wouldn't let what was mine be destroyed.

What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with breadlines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way.

Moscow is simply unwilling to recognize the right of self-determination of nations.

This [philanthropy] work is even more fascinating. It requires us to think harder about how we build partnerships, who we get behind. And yet we get to see progress that in some ways is even more profound than the great advances that digital technology has provided.

I'm asking : if the Kosovars have the right to self-determination, why should people on Crimea not have it? I would say: everyone should comply with uniform international rules and not want to change them any time one feels like it.

Self-definition and self-determination is about the many varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create, and evolve into who we know ourselves to be. It’s okay if your personal definition is in a constant state of flux as you navigate the world.

We are simply allowing our right to self-determination to be stolen from us.

For the United States, supporting international development is more than just an expression of our compassion. It is a vital investment in the free, prosperous, and peaceful international order that fundamentally serves our national interest.

The greatest quality that a person can possess is the quality of self-belief. If you believe you can, you can. If you believe you won't, you most certainly won't.

The ultimate goal is two states for two people: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people and the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people - each state in joined self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.

The UN is committed to the goal of ensuring that all nations share in economic, social, & scientific progress. It delivers humanitarian assistance to the victims of wars and natural disasters.

... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.

The Ottoman Empire . . . The rulers in Turkey were fortunately so corrupt that they left people alone pretty much - were mostly interested in robbing them - and they left them alone to run their own affairs . . . with a lot of local self determination.

Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Find a way or make one. Try with all your might. Self-made or never made.

I'm standing up for the right of self-determination. I'm standing up for our territory. I'm standing up for our people. I'm standing up for international law. I'm standing up for all those territories - those small territories and peoples the world over - who, if someone doesn't stand up and say to an invader 'enough, stop', would be at risk.

I think if you want good things to happen for a country like Haiti, then you need to provide the circumstances where the Haitians can do that.

All of women's aspirations--whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination--ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas--and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.

I think the Montgomery bus boycott initiated an era of self-determination.

Our character is our will; for what we will we are.

Gender assignment is a "construction" and yet many genderqueer and trans people refuse those assignments in part or in full. That refusal opens the way for a more radical form of self-determination, one that happens in solidarity with others who are undergoing a similar struggle.

Most Arabs and Muslims feel that the United States hasn't really been paying much attention to their desires. They think it has been pursuing its policies for its own sake and not according to many of the principles that it claims are its own - democracy, self-determination, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, international law.

The thing that I think was very brave of my younger self was that he decided he would be an idiot. Just persevere. That feels brave to me: deciding that I'm going to damn well be this person that I've set my heart on being.

Self-ruled Taiwan cannot be expected to accept such an affront to the legitimacy of its government and the self-determination of the Taiwanese people.