Shirin Ebadi Quotes

So I decided the only place I can speak to the world is from outside Israel.

I have left my home, my family, and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot.

As I grew older and got into the late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be a voice of the people. You know, getting locked up all the time and going through so much oppression and seeing it all around myself, I wanted to be a voice for it.

As you look at me and listen to me, please remember the often repeated truth that one prisoner of conscience is one too many.

One prisoner of conscience is one too many.

The real truth is, I just want to keep the voice of dissent alive in all of our elections. I don't really want to hang out with politicians.

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!

Writing is powerful. Whether it's a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty International writing letters on behalf of political prisoners, the power of telling stories is usually what causes change.

I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!

America's dissidents are not committed to mental hospitals and sent into exile; they thrive and prosper and buy a house in Nantucket and take flyers in the commodities market.

You have been adopted by Amnesty. That proves you are a subversive. Amnesty only adopts [the cases of] subversives.

It is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you'll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you're going to have to keep on saying that. You're going to have to say that I am a proletariat; I am the people.

I don't want to be a dissident. But in the same time, I don't want to go back home and be silent again.

If there are things that some think are wrong, then people have the right to speak up.

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

Constant pressure by Turkish consulates across the United States, as well as pervasive and continual harassment by the government in Turkey, has so far failed to stifle my dissent. As they increase the pressure, I raise my voice.

Protests are part of our democracy.

Who is against human rights in Belarus today? Of course, no one should view human rights as the right to smash shop windows or stir up unrest in the streets.

I understand my mother and father and sister are in Turkey, but if I stop talking, who is going to speak for the thousands and thousands of innocent people in jail?

Sometimes sports serves as a reprieve from politics, and sometimes it serves as an extension of it.

Getting out to protest, this is something real and, I would say, something patriotic. Part of the new authoritarianism is to get people to prefer fiction and inaction to reality and action.

The N.B.A. provides a big platform to shed light on the human rights violations in Turkey and gives a voice to the thousands of people persecuted.

Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.

A lot of people died fighting tyranny. The least I can do is vote against it.