Short quotations and aphorisms, as well as sentences on human rights, or those essential privileges which include the right to individual freedom, self-determination and a dignified existence.
Human rights quotes
- If it is a duty to respect the rights of others, it is also a duty to keep one's own. (Herbert Spencer)
- I am inferior to any man whose rights I trample underfoot. (Horace Greeley)
- When people impose duties and do not want to grant rights, they have to be paid well. (Goethe)
- With the social contract, man loses his natural freedom and an unlimited right to everything that tempts him and that he can achieve; instead he gains civil liberty and ownership of what he owns. (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
- The respect and rights acquired by all are the work of a few men full of ideals and dead for them and forgetting these men is like giving up respect and rights. (Robysjack)
- Women's rights are men's duties. (Karl Kraus)
- The existence of an unemployed person is a denial of the right to live worse than death itself. (José Ortega Gasset)
- Socialism necessarily leads to the subordination of the rights and dignity of individuals to the state or to any collective similar to the state. (Konrad Adenauer)
- Women's rights are a responsibility of all mankind; fighting against all forms of violence against women is an obligation of humanity; the strengthening of women's power of action means the progress of all humanity. (Kofi Annan)
- Human rights are based on human dignity. Human dignity is an ideal worth fighting for and dying for. (Robert Maynard Hutchins)
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- Ultimately, peace boils down to respect for the inviolable human rights - the work of justice is peace - while war arises from the violation of these rights. (Pope John Paul II)
- A right without a corresponding liability is as unreal as a sheet of paper that has only one side. (Felix Morley)
- The ultimate goal of all revolutionary social changes is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to freedom and well-being. (Emma Goldman)
- What every man fears is the unknown. When this scenario presents itself, you will willingly give up your rights in exchange for the guarantee of your well-being guaranteed by the World Government. (Henry Kissinger)
- The modern state exists not to protect our rights, but to do us good or to make us good. (C.S.Lewis)
- American support for human rights and democracy is our most noble export product to the world. (William John Bennett)
- The real question is: work cannot be a law without being a right. (Victor Hugo)
- When the law cannot assert its rights, at least make it legitimate that the law does not prevent you from inflicting wrong. (William Shakespeare)
- The equality of rights gives rise to the identity of our most noble interests; you cannot subvert the rights of your neighbor without striking hard on your own rights. (Carl Christian Schurz)
- Only as a citizen of a good state does the individual come to exercise his right. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
- We once again confess to ourselves that since humanity introduced human rights, it has led a dog's life. (Karl Kraus)
- Society has appropriated, without pointing out, so many rights over individuals that they are forced to fight it. (Honoré De Balzac)
- There are unwritten rights, but safer than all writings. (Lucio Anneo Seneca)
- You have the right to speak and the right to make mistakes, and in both cases extensively. (Neil Kinnock)
- Our current capital punishment system violates our basic trust in justice and equality, and places us among the worst detractors of human rights. (Jesse Louis Jackson Jr)
- Every man is entitled by right to intense satisfactions such as his pains. (Rex Stout)
- The first of human rights is that of not being the photocopy of the neighbor, of being more or less strange. (Fernando Savater)
- True civilization is when each man gives each other every right he claims for himself. (Robert Green Ingersoll)
- If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.They don't care about human rights. (Nelson Mandela)
Human rights aphorisms
- Always remember that you do not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be an individual. You can never make a useful contribution in life unless you are. (Eleanor Anna Roosevelt)
- A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest people can enjoy the highest civil, economic and social rights that the largest and most powerful have. (Asa Philip Randolph)
- What men value in this world are not rights, but privileges. (Henry Louis Mencken)
- Law and duty are like palm trees: they do not bear fruit unless they grow side by side. (Félicité De Lamennais)
- There is only one fundamental human right, the right to do what the hell you like. And with it comes the only fundamental duty of man, the duty to assume its consequences. (Patrick Jake O’Rourke)
- The revolt is proper to the warned man, who is aware of his rights. (Albert Camus)
- Every man has a right to his opinions, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. (Bernard Baruch)
- If you do not mobilize to defend the rights of someone who is deprived of it at the time, when they then affect yours, nobody will move for you. And you'll find yourself alone. (Sean Penn)
- We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is the Responsibility Charter. (Bill Maher)
- If democracy is destroyed, all rights are destroyed; even if certain economic advantages enjoyed by the governed were maintained, they would be so only on the basis of resignation. (Karl Raimund Popper)
- For most of the world, civil and political rights appear as luxuries of a distant future. (Andrew Young)
- The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. (Hubert Horatio Humphrey)
- If I can't sit down to eat where I want, I prefer to die. We fight for our rights! (David Oyelowo)
- One of the most embarrassing aspects of being a gentleman is that you are not allowed to be violent in asserting your rights. (Nicholas Murray Butler)
- If you can convince a people that the enemy is everywhere and that they can strike at any moment, that people agree to put anything back into the hands of its leader. Freedom, civil rights. (Michael Moore)
- The smallest minority in the world is the individual. Anyone who denies the rights of the individual cannot claim to be a defender of minorities. (Ayn Rand)
- It is as if there were two France, the founding country of many rights and another reactionary France, anchored in its own privileges. (Delphine Coulin)
- Peace in every home, every street, every village, every nation - this is my dream. Education for every boy and girl in the world. Sitting in school reading books with all my friends is my right. Seeing every human being smiling with happiness is my wish. (Malala Yousafzai)
- The perception of the importance of human rights was born precisely as the result of a long journey, also made up of multiple sufferings and sacrifices, which contributed to forming the awareness of the preciousness, uniqueness and unrepeatability of each individual human person. (Pope francesco)
- The burden of justification falls on those who seek to infringe that particular right. (Edward Snowden)
- We must not limit ourselves to jealously preserving what we have today, but we have a duty to help others to get what belongs to them. (Debbie Ferguson)
- The rights of others are claimed; our claims are straight. (Charles Lemesle)
- You cannot transfer the rights of others because they are not useful to you. (Edward Snowden)
- Human rights are the heart of our foreign policy, because in fact they are the soul of our nation. (Jimmy Carter)
- The right of self-defense never ends. It is among the most sacred, necessary for nations as for individuals. (James Monroe)
- In the Middle East, husbands are opposed to democracy. They have settled on their lifestyle, but now traditions must change, like all of us. If equal rights are not given to women, progress is not possible. (Shimon Peres)
- We only ask for justice and equal rights: the right to vote, the right to have our earnings and equality before the law. (Lucy Stone)
- Every right is tied to a duty, just as every freedom has to do with responsibilities. (Russell Kirk)
Phrases on human rights
- Inalienable rights are necessary limits for every government. (Francis Hutcheson)
- The modern state no longer has anything but rights: it no longer recognizes duties. (Georges Bernados)
- Being in first class doesn't matter if you can't study at all. When someone takes your pen out of your hand, then you really understand how important education is. (Malala Yousafzai)
- No one can alienate his or her natural right in favor of others, understood here as the power to think freely.(Baruch Spinoza)
- Individual rights are not subject to public vote; a majority has no right to vote to remove the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from the oppression of majorities and the smallest minority on earth is the individual. (Ayn Rand)
- When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw. (Nelson Mandela)
- The right to existence is the first inviolable right of every man. (Giuseppe Mazzini)
- A right is not what someone gives you; it's what nobody can take away from you. (Tom C. Clark)
- The extension of rights to women is the fundamental principle of all social progress. (Francois Marie Charles Fourier)
- I don't want to fight anyone with any weapon; I don't have to fight for my rights, my rights have to come to me. (Bob Marley)
- The law according to nature is the utility pact which consists in not doing any harm or receiving it. (Epicurus)
- Violence against women is one of the most shameful human rights violations. (Kofi Annan)
- I would have two rights to add to the list of human rights: the right to disorder and the right to leave. (Charles Pierre Baudelaire)
- Freedom can only exist where there is knowledge. Without learning, men would not know what their rights are. (Benjamin Rush)
- It is not worth having rights that do not derive from a well performed duty. (Mahatma Gandhi)
- I have only one passion, that of light in the name of humanity that has suffered so much and has the right to happiness. (Emile Zola)
- Where there is no respect for human rights - I say the inalienable rights inherent in man as a man - there can be no peace, because any violation of personal dignity favors resentment and a spirit of revenge. (Pope John Paul II)
- The unions of men, their reasons, are determined by a single great purpose: to conquer the right of men to be different. (Vasily Grossman)
- Gays have the right to be unhappy like all other couples. (Chris Rock)
- If it is a duty to respect the rights of others, it is also a duty to have one's rights respected. (Herbert Spencer)
- The rights automatically increase for those who duly perform their duties. (Mahatma Gandhi)
- A right is only the other aspect of a duty. (Jean Paul Sartre)
- He who obtains a right does not get to violate that of others to maintain his. (José Martì)
- In human coexistence, every natural right in a person entails a respective duty in all other people: the duty to recognize and respect that right. (Pope John XXIII)
- Dying defending the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being. (Khalil Gibran)
- Rights: the privileges of citizenship according to current codes. (Ron Hubbard)
- I believe it is an inalienable right of anyone to go to hell in their own way. (Robert Lee Frost)
- Laws and rights are inherited as an eternal disease: They drag from one generation to another, they spread from place to place, slowly. Reason becomes absurdity, the public benefits a calamity; what a disgrace to be a postero! (Goethe)
- A people inspired by democracy, human rights and economic opportunities turn their backs firmly on extremism. (Benazir Bhutto)
