Great Throughts Treasury

"It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"It is because the human experience is universal that human rights are universal." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"My own country’s record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"No practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Often those who are denied rights are least empowered to bring about the changes they seek." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women’s rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice. " - Albert Einstein

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, the farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." - Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

"The compulsory military service is a phenomenon manifested by the outrageous lack of rights to personal dignity." - Albert Einstein

"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." - Albert Einstein

"For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

"While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"The Godless would deny and destroy human rights .... the liberties of a nation cannot be secure when belief in God is abandoned." - Richard Halverson, fully Richard Christian Halverson

"It is proper I should desire you particularly to distinguish between the love of our country and that spirit of rivalship and ambition which has been common among nations. What has the love of their country hitherto been among mankind? What has it been but a love of domination; a desire of conquest, and a thirst for grandeur and glory, by extending territory, and enslaving surrounding countries? What has it been but a blind and narrow principle, producing in every country a contempt of other countries, and forming men into combinations and factions against their common rights and liberties? This is the principle that has been too often cried up as a virtue of the first rank: a principle of the same kind with that which governs clans of Indians, or tribes of Arabs, and leads them out to plunder and massacre. As most of the evils which have taken place in private life, and among individuals, have been occasioned by the desire of private interest overcoming the public affections; so most of the evils which have taken place among bodies of men have been occasioned by the desire of their own interest overcoming the principle of universal benevolence: and leading them to attack one another’s territories, to encroach on one another’s rights, and to endeavor to build their own advancement on the degradation of all within the reach of their power? What was the love of their country among the Jews, but a wretched partiality to themselves, and a proud contempt of all other nations? What was the love of their country among the old Romans? We have heard much of it; but I cannot hesitate in saying that, however great it appeared in some of its exertions, it was, in general, no better than a principle holding together a band of robbers in their attempts to crush all liberty but their own. What is now the love of his country in a Spaniard, a Turk, or a Russian? Can it be considered as anything better than a passion for slavery, or a blind attachment to a spot where he enjoys no rights, and is disposed of as if he was a beast?" - Richard Price

"For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own. Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary sense be subversient to the old. The old gene-selected evolution, by making brains, provided the soup in which the first memes arose. Once self-copying memes had arisen, their own, much faster, kind of evolution took off. We biologists have assimilated the idea of genetic evolution so deeply that we tend to forget that it is only one of the many possible kinds of evoluton." - Richard Dawkins

"Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion." - Richard Dawkins

"Without adherence to the original understanding, even the actual Bill of Rights could be pared or eliminated. It is asserted nonetheless, and sometimes on high authority, that the judicial philosophy of original understanding is fatally defective in any number of respects." - Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork

"It's rest I want--there, I have said it out-- From cooking meals for hungry hired men And washing dishes after them--from doing Things over and over that just won't stay done. By good rights I ought not to have so much Put on me, but there seems no other way. Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. He says the best way out is always through. And I agree to that, or in so far As that I can see no way out but through-- Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced. " - Robert Frost

"While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things, The fate of empires and the fall of kings; While quacks of State must each produce his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention." - Robert Burns, aka Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard

"I have come to the conclusion that the 22nd Amendment limiting the presidency to two terms was a mistake. Shouldn't the people have the right to vote for someone as many times as they want to vote for him." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Most tax revisions didn't improve the system, they made it more like Washington itself complicated, unfair, cluttered with gobbledygook and loopholes designed for those with the power and influence to hire high-priced legal and tax advisers." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"My fellow Americans I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. (Comment while testing a microphone before a broadcast 11 Aug 84)" - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Our whole system of government is based on We the people, but if we the people don't pay attention to what's going on, we have no right to bellyache or squawk when things go wrong." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"They had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.'" - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"We seek a constitutional amendment to permit voluntary school prayer. God should never have been expelled from America's classrooms in the first place." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"In fact, many people daily go beyond both their job description and the informal expectations they carry within their organization and do what they are not authorized to do. At a minimum, these people exercise leadership momentarily by impressing upon a group, sometimes by powerfully articulating an idea that strikes a resonant chord, the need to pay attention to a missing point of view. A staff assistant will speak up at a meeting even though she has no authority to do so." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Yet those who do lead usually feel that they are taking action beyond whatever authority they have." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul." - Russell Kirk

"It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

"Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

"Any kind of thought or meditation or pleasure would impede and disturb the soul and would introduce noise into the deep silence which the soul should observe in order to hear the deep and delicate voice in which God speaks to the heart in this secret place. When the soul is led into silence, it must forget even the practice of loving advertence… it must practice that advertence only when it is not conscious of being brought into solitude or interior rest or forgetfulness. Pure contemplation consists in receiving. The soul approaches God more nearly by not understanding than by understanding. Faith is darkness to the understanding. God brought them to this solitude and emptiness of their faculties and operations that He may speak to their hearts. God is leading you through the state of solitude and recollection and withdrawing you from your labors of sense. Return not to sense again. Lay aside your operations for they will now be a great obstacle and hindrance to you, since God is granting you the grace of Himself working within you. God is bearing the soul in His arms… and thus, although it is making progress at the rate willed by God Himself, it is not conscious of such movement. Three kinds of love: 1. the soul now loves God, not through itself but through Himself. 2. the soul is absorbed in the love of God and God surrenders Himself to the soul with great vehemence. 3. the soul love Him for Who He is." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

"There is no time of life past learning something." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate." - Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.

"The manic pursuit of success cost me everything I could love: my wife, my three children, some friends I would have liked to grow old with." - Sammy Davis, Jr., born Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr.

"The goal of study has not been practical life, to understand the world and our duty in it." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"Christian men, who had come together for solemn deliberation in the hour of their extremity, to say there was so wide a difference in their religious belief that they could not, as one man, bow the knee in prayer to the Almighty, whose advice and assistance they hoped to obtain." - Samuel Adams

"Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last resort." - Samuel Adams

"Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals." - Samuel Adams

"Men who content themselves with the semblance of truth, and a display of words, talk much of our obligations to Great Britain for protection. Had she a single eye to our advantage? A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested." - Samuel Adams

"The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. - Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom. It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." - Samuel Adams

"The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule." - Samuel Adams

"The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people." - Samuel Adams

"I am in favor of the legal enactment for the maximum hours of labor for all workmen in direct Government employment, and for those who do work that the Government has substituted for Governmental authority. I am in favor of the --and the federation . . . is in favor of the maximum number of hours for children, for minors, and for women." - Samuel Gompers

"I do not for a moment entertain the belief that by our simple declaration that we shall make friends of the negro laborers. Their previous condition, their former absolute dependence upon their masters (and now their employers) have deprived them of learning that it is necessary for them to rely upon themselves and upon each other, but I am confident that if organized workingmen will take a more liberal view of the situation, or rather a more practical view, that the negro workman will to a very much greater extent make common cause with us in our struggles. . . [The negro] is a living fact and a factor and regardless of all the prejudices that may be entertained he must be counted with and the way to count with him is the question that must be considered." - Samuel Gompers

"It is true that the Constitution of the A. F. of L., at the present time provides against the issuance of two charters to Central bodies in any one city and applies equally to white men as to colored. But the matter is seriously considered that under the circumstances, such as they obtained in New Orleans and in several other points in the South, that is, where white workingmen are organized and object to the colored workmen becoming members of the union, or to receive colored delegates from workmen's unions in the Central bodies, it would be advisable not only to form unions of colored workmen but to have some Central organization where they could have an opportunity of discussing and promoting their interests generally, while, at the same time, of course, acting in a common polity as to the best interest of all." - Samuel Gompers

"There are about 8,000,000 negroes in the United States, and, my friends, I not only have not the power to put the negro out of the labor movement, but I would not, even if I did have the power. . . . Why should I do such a thing? . . . . I would have nothing to gain, but the movement would have much to lose. Under our policies and principles we seek to build up the labor movement, instead of injuring it, and we want all the negroes we can possibly get who will join hands with organized labor." - Samuel Gompers

"To-day we are living in an age of combinations and trusts, and the individual workman is as weak against the combination of wealth as would be a straw in a cyclone. It is essential that the United States Government, where it can exercise, should exercise its power to protect the weak against the rapacity of the strong." - Samuel Gompers

"We deny the assertion made by some of our opponents when they say the American Federation of Labor is against political action. We are against the the American labor movement being made a political party machine." - Samuel Gompers