Rights Quotes - Page 163

Just five days now before Donald Trump becomes president of the United States after the most intense week yet of this transition.It began with an early Monday morning tweet taking on Meryl Streep.. By Saturday morning, the target was civil rights legend John Lewis. In between, the president-elect sparred with the press, said intelligence officials were acting like Nazis, called Hillary Clinton guilty as hell, counterpunching just like in the campaign.

An institution that...would permit Iraq, a terrorist state that refuses to disarm, to become soon the chair of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament, and which recently elected Libya - a terrorist state - to chair the United Nations Commission on Human Rights of all things, seems not to be even struggling to regain credibility. That these acts of irresponsibility could happen now, at this moment in history, is breathtaking.

... the modern state masks itself in moral ideologies which obscure its actual conduct. One of the most compelling and insidious of these ideologies is the doctrine of natural rights. It was to secure these rights that the modern state was invented in the first place, and it is impossible, especially for Americans, not to be seduced by the doctrine. But it is nonetheless a philosophical superstition.

As a citizen, you have an obligation to the countrys tax system, but you also have an obligation to yourself to know your rights under the law and possible tax deductions -- and to claim every one of them.

Do I play tennis? Man, I had one of the baddest overhead rights of anyone. Bam!

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.

Judge Samuel Alito, millions of Americans are concerned about your nomination. They're worried that you would be a judicial activist who would restrict our rights and freedoms.

In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens.

We want to make certain that every American who stood in silent tribute to Rosa Parks hopes that the Sepreme Court Judge will break silence and speak out clearly for the civil rights that define our unity as a nation.

The last stop to protect rights and liberties is the Supreme Court.

When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry.

The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of anti-Western hatred are over.

Historically, the court has been the forum to which individuals can turn when they believed their constitutional rights were violated. This has been especially noteworthy in the arena of civil rights.

I'm concerned about the role the court will play in protecting individual rights in this and the next century.

It's animal by animal that you save a species.

People are killed because they're gay. I don't think, "What do I want to do today? I want to speak up on gay rights." No. It's God catching me by my neck. I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can't!

Race should not be used to claim privileges and rights for one group, exclusively, which are denied other different groups. Then that is an illegitimate use of race.

What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong.

The destruction of the earth’s environment is the human rights challenge of our time.

Our human responsibility for animal rights, plant rights, and the rights of the earth to its health and wholeness is self-evident. Whatever our beliefs about the hereafter we are the temporary custodians of the here-and-now, and if we neglect our obligations or abuse our powers then we abrogate any rights to a further share in this planet's delights.

Our society is obsessed with personal rights, but it will survive only if we adopt personal obligations.

And my approach has always been to stand up and speak out on behalf of the economic rights of people.

Peace is a civil right which makes other human rights possible. Peace is a precondition for our existence. Peace permits our continued existence.

The Founding Fathers believed that our Creator gave us certain inalienable rights. The Pledge of Allegiance simply reinforces the beliefs that led to the birth of our great nation. It is an oath of our fidelity to our country, and I am disappointed that the [9th Circuit] Court chose to rule against this American treasure.

Khairani Barokka is a writer, spoken-word poet, visual artist and performer whose work has a strong vein of activism, particularly around disability, but also how this intersects with, for example, issues of gender - she's campaigned for reproductive rights in her native Indonesian, and is currently studying for a PhD in disability and visual cultures at Goldsmiths. She's written a feminist, environmentalist, anti-colonialist narrative poem, with tactile artwork and a Braille translation. How could I not publish that?