dignity of individuals Quotes

Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings... their importance, their dignity... and agreed that was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.

The truth which has made us free will in the end make us glad also. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.

Our search for such [moral] principles can start with . . . the unconditional imperative to acknowledge every person as a person. If we ask for the contents given by this absolute, we find, first, something negative-the command not to treat a person as a thing. This seems little, but it is much. It is the core of the principle of justice.

The human being is to be respected and defended, not protected like a bird or a river.

We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society.

The members - mentally handicapped people who are marginal in society and not useful in an economic sense - welcomed me into their lives. And I was loved, not because of what s doing but because of who I was.

Every human life is precious in God's sight and no effort should be spared in the attempt to promote throughout the world a genuine respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of individuals and peoples everywhere.

I think you have to repudiate torture and I think you have to end what's going on at Guantanamo and you have to live up to American values. Basically you restore - what the American dream brought to the world stage was respect for the individual and the idea that people aren't pawns that rulers can push around but they have rights.

A government cannot be truly just without affirming the intrinsic value of human life.

Trample not on the ruins of a man.

I don't know that the United States is 'God's Country,' but the church has been so strong here, and because of its influence, we hold life to be sacred and we believe that individuals have dignity. This is part of our legacy.

Let your observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of domination and power, the parent of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism, which places man upon a level with his fellow tenants of the woods.

I will not use people's lives as bargaining chips.

The use of torture is contrary to sound judgment and common sense. Humanity itself cries out against it, and demands it to be utterly abolished.

There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.

No one deserves to be whipped like an animal.

People are not "things" to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not "human resources." They are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting them. We must examine the concept of leading and following with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and subordinate with increasing skepticism. We must examine the concept of management and labor with new beliefs. And we must examine the nature of organizations that demand such distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.

Too often, attention is diverted from the needs of populations, insufficient emphasis is placed on work in the fields, and the goods of the earth are not given adequate protection. As a result, economic imbalance is produced, and the inalienable rights and dignity of every human person are ignored.

Peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.

I shall show that the place does not honor the man, but the man the place.

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man, that state is obsolete.