Erin O'Toole Quotes

If you care about injustice, and if you care about freedom, and you care about human rights, then you care about them everywhere.

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

Freeing oppressed nationalities is perhaps the most dangerous of all philanthropic enterprises.

In today's restless world, America needs to identify with the quest for universal human dignity, a dignity that embodies both freedom and democracy but also implies respect for cultural diversity.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom - along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

In my lifetime, I have seen how greater liberty, greater justice, and greater respect ultimately does prevail, but it prevails only when people are willing to fight for it and willing to lose for it.

There was a time that human rights was not even an issue in this country. Then prisoners' rights became an issue.

Human rights only have meaning if they are universal.

America stands for freedom, liberty and justice for all. And it's not happening for all right now.

You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.

When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes.

Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.

There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.

I do protect human rights, and I hope I shall always be looked up as a champion of human rights.

Cultural variety is always worth striving for, but must never precede the declaration of human rights.

The rights of some must not be enjoyed by denying the rights of others. Neither can we permit states' rights at the expense of human rights.

Of course, there can be serious injustices within free societies.

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.

Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.

This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.

To this wonderful page in our country's history another more glorious still will be added, and the slave shall show at last to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links of his fetters.

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

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.

If we want to protect people against dictators or repression or torture, don't you need that rule to be universal so as to not end up with a situation where we do so only when it is comfortable, profitable and safe?