This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, Muslim name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
I believe in human rights for everyone, and none of us is qualified to judge each other and that none of us should therefore have that authority.
Rights |
How can we speak of Democracy or Freedom when from the very beginning of life we mould the child to undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? How can we expect democracy when we have reared slaves? Real freedom begins at the beginning of life, not at the adult stage. These people who have been diminished in their powers, made short-sighted, devitalized by mental fatigue, whose bodies have become distorted, whose wills have been broken by elders who say: “your will must disappear and mine prevail!”—how can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use the rights of freedom?
Beginning | Democracy | Freedom | Life | Life | People | Rights | Will | Wills | Child |
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Important | Machines | Motives | Property | Rights | Society | Society |
Civil Rights opened the windows. When you open the windows, it does not mean that everybody will get through. We must create our own opportunities.
In their quest for rights they have naturally placed emphasis on their wrongs rather than their achievements and possessions, and have retold history as a story of their long martyrdom.
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Education, in general, should not be limited to the acquisition of knowledge and preparation for a career, or, in common parlance, "to make a better living." And we must think in terms of a '"better living" not only for the individual, but also for the society as a whole. The educational system must, therefore, pay more attention, indeed the main attention, to the building of character, with emphasis on moral and ethical values. (Need one be reminded of what happened in our lifetime in a country that ranked among the foremost in science, technology, philosophy, etc.?)Education must put greater emphasis on the promotion of fundamental human rights and obligations of justice and morality, which are the basis of any human society, if it is to be truly human and not turn into a jungle.
Better | Justice | Knowledge | Rights | Society | System | Society | Think |
Humanism may not be universal but may be quite relative to a certain situation. What we call humanism has been used by Marxists, liberals, Nazis, Catholics. This does not mean that we have to get rid of what we call human rights or freedom, but that we can't say that freedom or human rights has to be limited at certain frontiers. For instance, if you asked eighty years ago if feminine virtue was part of universal humanism, everyone would have answered yes. What I am afraid of about humanism is that it presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal model for any kind of freedom. I think that there are more secrets, more possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we can imagine in humanism as it is dogmatically represented on every side of the political rainbow: the Left, the Center, the Right.
Ethics | Freedom | Future | Model | Rights | Virtue | Virtue | Afraid | Think |
Mikhail Gorbachev, fully Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
All members of the world community should resolutely discard old stereotypes and motivations nurtured by the Cold War, and give up the habit of seeking each other's weak spots and exploiting them in their own interests. We have to respect the peculiarities and differences which will always exist, even when human rights and freedoms are observed throughout the world. I keep repeating that with the end of confrontation differences can be made a source of healthy competition, an important factor for progress. This is an incentive to study each other, to engage in exchanges, a prerequisite for the growth of mutual trust. For knowledge and trust are the foundations of a new world order.
Growth | Habit | Important | Knowledge | Respect | Rights | Study | Trust | Will | World | Respect | Old |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
The State, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest. It protects its own citizens only; it recognises human rights, humanity, civilisation within its own confines alone. Since it recognises no rights outside itself, it logically arrogates to itself the right to exercise the most ferocious inhumanity toward all foreign populations, which it can plunder, exterminate, or enslave at will. If it does show itself generous and humane toward them, it is never through a sense of duty, for it has no duties except to itself in the first place, and then to those of its members who have freely formed it, who freely continue to constitute it or even, as always happens in the long run, those who have become its subjects. As there is no international law in existence, and as it could never exist in a meaningful and realistic way without undermining to its foundations the very principle of the absolute sovereignty of the State, the State can have no duties toward foreign populations. Hence, if it treats a conquered people in a humane fashion, if it plunders or exterminates it halfway only, if it does not reduce it to the lowest degree of slavery, this may be a political act inspired by prudence, or even by pure magnanimity, but it is never done from a sense of duty, for the State has an absolute right to dispose of a conquered people at will. This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue. It bears the name patriotism, and it constitutes the entire transcendent morality of the State. We call it transcendent morality because it usually goes beyond the level of human morality and justice, either of the community or of the private individual, and by that same token often finds itself in contradiction with these. Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to plunder, to assassinate or enslave one's fellowman is ordinarily regarded as a crime. In public life, on the other hand, from the standpoint of patriotism, when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue. And this virtue, this duty, are obligatory for each patriotic citizen; everyone is supposed to exercise them not against foreigners only but against one's own fellow citizens, members or subjects of the State like himself, whenever the welfare of the State demands it.
Absolute | Association | Contradiction | Duty | Glory | Humanity | Inhumanity | Law | Men | Morality | People | Public | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Rights | Sense | Association |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
I believe Mackey’s flat statement that “corporate philanthropy is a good thing” is flatly wrong. Consider the decision by the founders of Whole Foods to donate 5 percent of net profits to philanthropy. They were clearly within their rights in doing so. They were spending their own money.…But what reason is there to suppose that the stream of profit distributed in this way would do more good for society than investing that stream of profit in the enterprise itself or paying it out as dividends and letting the stockholders dispose of it? The practice makes sense only because of our obscene tax laws, whereby a stockholder can make a larger gift for a given after-tax cost if the corporation makes the gift on his behalf than if he makes the gift directly. That is a good reason for eliminating the corporate tax or for eliminating the deductibility of corporate charity, but it is not a justification for corporate charity.
Cost | Decision | Good | Justification | Philanthropy | Practice | Reason | Rights | Sense | Society | Society |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow; not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest; not the individualistic, egoistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty extolled by the School of J.-J. Rousseau and other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which limits the rights of each — an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero. No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being — they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom.
Dignity | Eternal | Individual | Liberty | Nothing | Reality | Rights | Slavery | Unique | Happiness | Privilege |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The true source of rights is duty. If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek.
Molly Ivins, fully Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins
There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.
Freedom | People | Relationship | Rights | Safe |
A man who stepped quarter of a million miles in space to the moon was unable to step length, a few meters of assisted his colleagues are dying of hunger in India and other Ashakhm injustice in Jerusalem, Vietnam .. and America meets Russia to brighten up the moon and fail to meet them in the Security Council. and escape from that soul and to Atbha space universe where the laws of God to rely on accurate it is safe and easy .. A thousand times easier than observing i'tikaaf rights on the same repairs and He should work out .. but at the same time escape from man's first message on the ground... To know himself and He should work out. Thought and religion and science together make man himself... The physical science alone, without faith and without creating not only made from the same arrogant and distorted deformity giant moving between planets and invent a terrible terrible weapons of mass murder by destroying the All, and then destroys himself without knowing it.
Faith | God | Hunger | Injustice | Injustice | Knowing | Man | Murder | Religion | Rights | Safe | Science | Security | Soul | Space | Thought | Time | Universe | Weapons | Work | God | Murder | Thought |
Child labor has become one of the biggest global concerns for many human rights activists. Approximately 218 million children world- wide are forced into labor. Unfortunately, 126 million of them work in hazardous conditions. Roughly 73 million of child labor populations are less than 10 years old. Most important, one of the most astonishing facts about child labor is that every year 22,000 children die in accidents that are work- related (FreetheChildren.com). The majority of the children subjected to child labor come from poorer countries of the world. As a result of increased poverty in these parts of the world, children are kept out of school and forced to work. Organizations that have been developed to fight child labor believe that by increasing education access and helping to end poverty are crucial in the fight to end senseless child labor.
Children | Education | Global | Labor | Majority | Poverty | Rights | Work | Child |
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
In its proper meaning equality before the law means the right to participate in the making of the laws by which one is governed, a constitution which guarantees democratic rights to all sections of the population, the right to approach the court for protection or relief in the case of the violation of rights guaranteed in the constitution, and the right to take part in the administration of justice as judges, magistrates, attorneys-general, law advisers and similar positions.
Administration | Equality | Justice | Law | Meaning | Means | Right | Rights |
Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux, sometimes Nicholas Desperaux or Nicolas Boileau
To support those of your rights authorized by Heaven, destroy everything rather than yield; that is the spirit of the Church.
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.