Asma Jahangir Quotes

Where there are breaches of human rights, you need to speak out about it, no matter where it is.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in issues of social justice, political freedom, and civil rights.

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!

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.

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

Experience has shown that no civil right has ever been secured without legislation.

The fact is, human rights victories are rarely won by powerful governments or well-armed militaries. More often than not, these battles are led by individuals and small groups of people determined to overcome wrong. Think King, Gandhi, Mandela.

Minorities have never been given their rights. They have always had to wage a political and legal battle to win them.

I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

Look at the Civil Rights Movement. Look at any kind of fight for change. People had to keep fighting and taking their rights. Rights are never given to you. They have to be fought for and they have to be taken.

The issue of human rights is one of the most fundamental human issues and also one of the most sensitive and controversial.

Any kind of civil rights oppression is wrong.

Even here in America, people are fighting for civil rights 45 years after the civil rights movement.

The rights of all of us are diminished when the rights of any one of us are threatened.

There will be no peace in this land until slavery is ended.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

We are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

Our protest was a cry for freedom and for civil rights. We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.

This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, “Are the blacks good enough to be free?” but, “Have they the right?” So today the question is not, “Will outrages result from freeing humanity?” but, “Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?”

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

People are dying in vain because this country isn't holding their end of the bargain up as far as, you know, giving freedom and justice and liberty to everybody.

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that's a violation of basic human rights.