Mary Travers Quotes

Human rights are fundamental rights, they are the minimum, the very least we demand. Too often, they become the goal itself. What should be the minimum becomes the maximum - all we are supposed to expect - but human rights aren't enough. The goal is, and must always be, justice.

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!

The respect for human rights is one of the most significant advantages of a free and democratic nation in the peaceful struggle for influence, and we should use this good weapon as effectively as possible.

I've gone beyond civil rights and human rights to creation rights.

Establish democracy ... based on human rights as superior to property rights.

… a social right

Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience.

The rights of the lowliest criminal are not his alone. They belong to us all.

The lesson of history that all human rights are indivisible and that the failure to adhere to this principle jeopardizes the rights of all.

When the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes.

I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.

We cannot discuss human rights, when we are denying people the right to live.

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.

I'm struck by how very few people outside a rarefied world of true believers understand what you mean when you say human rights - that includes development experts and economists who are very keen to implement the UN Millennium Development Goals. They've told me quite frankly, that they don't know exactly what a human rights approach is.

It takes no compromise to give people their rights

Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen. It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights. The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching, of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers, but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.

The destiny of human rights is in the hands of all our citizens in all our communities.

Human rights is the only ideology that deserves to survive

We cannot speak of human rights in other countries unless we are going to do our utmost to protect the rights of our own people here at home.

I'm sad that it's uncool or offensive to talk about environmental or human rights issues.

Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.

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

If a country doesn't recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.

If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought.