Rights Quotes - Page 143

People are beginning to become disturbingly comfortable with a kind of official hypocrisy. Bizarrely, for instance, we've become numb to the idea that rights aren't absolute but are enjoyed on a kind of sliding scale.

People who won't sign the taxpayer protection pledge, people who won't sign the property-rights protection pledge, people who won't sign the state-sovereignty pledge, who won't put their beliefs in writing, who won't endorse the Freedom Agenda, we should be asking them some very very hard questions. Very hard questions. Because you know what, they get away with it. We hear what goes on in closed doors in Olympia. We hear them say the opposite of what they say publicly.

Nevada involved cattle, right? First of all, I thought the Lord owned the cattle on the thousand hills. What about the fact that even in early Scripture, the issue of water and forage rights is actually talked about by Abraham?

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.

Ethical globalization is possible if only we can hold governments and business accountable for respecting human rights, not just in the traditional political and legal realms, but in everything - health, education and the other social determinants of health - rights to food, safe water, sanitation and so on.

If the Chinese business community takes the Declaration of Human Rights, core labor standards, and environmental standards seriously, the government of China will take them far more seriously, too.

The international human rights framework is a vital component and engine for promoting global values. Governments have signed up to this international legal framework and we should hold them accountable, in all circumstances from environmental or labour standards, to trade talks, arms control and security issues as well as other international legal codes.

Since 9/11 the United States has been followed by countries with bad records, such as the former Soviet Union countries, into erosions of human rights. Because the United States has changed its standards it is undermining civil liberties elsewhere.

It is a great problem for the true international agenda of human rights that the United States, uniquely among industrialised countries, has not ratified three main instruments, has not ratified the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and we could have so much richer a debate and dialogue on international human rights standards if the superpower would sign up to the agenda.

Using human rights commitments more effectively, either as part of negotiations in the WTO or as part of the trade policy review process, poses issues of equality in a practical venue.

The question now is how best to help the Iraqi people build a democratic and free Iraqi society that ensures respect for the rights of all Iraqis.

I agree with those who argue that it is possible to distil from the religions of the world their common values and relevance. As far as I'm concerned I am involved in a complementary process with people who have a moral or spiritual commitment to human rights.

In human rights theory it is very important that governments still have the primary responsibility for the standards and provision of such services even if they no longer deliver them. They must insist that the private sector delivers without discrimination. So governments still have responsibility, including the need to influence business.

Sharing experience and building public support for the full range of rights is more powerful than legal cases.

If you look at the rights situation - what media companies pay - then you see that the rights prices continue to rise for powerful sports. Now what does that tell you? It tells you that the demand amongst global and local sponsors for these kinds of sports is immense, even if there is controversy attached to them like FIFA - who would definitely be number one on that list, though F1 has also been somewhat controversial.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

Evil must be attacked by. . . the day to day assault of the battering rams of justice.

In the current struggle, there is one positive course of action. There is no alternative, for the alternative would connote a rear march.

We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.

Law hath dominion over all things, over universal mind and matter; For there are reciprocities of rights, which no creature can gainsay.

Women have always been at the forefront of progressive movements. Women can be depended on when you need bodies in the streets for women's rights and human rights.

I think this conflict [against terrorism] is going to require a suspension of freedom and rights unlike anything we have ever seen, at least since World War II.

There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.

The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff.

The argument of those who are being criticized at any time, the civil rights movement forward, the anti-war movement forward, is, it's always outside agitators doing it.