The fidelity of a dog is a precious gift demanding no less binding moral responsibilities than the friendship of a human being.
— Konrad Lorenz
Whopping Human Rights quotations
God requires that we assist the animals, when they need our help.
Each being (human or creature) has the same right of protection.
We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection.
With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock.
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Every man has a right to his own opinion.
Every race has a right to its own action; therefore let no man persuade you against your will, let no other race influence you against your own.
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.
The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others.
We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.
If it is right for men to fight for their freedom, and God knows what the human race would be like today if men had not, since time began, fought for their freedom, then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the children they bear.
Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design.
We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It's our basic human right.
To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.
It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else.
We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos.
We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.
You can imprison a man, but not an idea.
You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.
I believe in a world of justice and human rights for all.
A world where girls can grow up free of fear of abuse. A world where women are treated with the respect and dignity that is their right. A world where poverty is not acceptable. My dear young friends, you can make this your world.
I am opposed to globalism, I am opposed to colonialism, I am opposed to any sort of complusion of one nation over another. (...) I also deeply believe in human rights.
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.
Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul.
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense... human rights invented America.
Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.
Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist.
Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it.
Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.
We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights.
We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off.
I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation.
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.
Human rights are universal and indivisible.
Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them.
People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable.
Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?
The law has no claim to human respect.
It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.
I don't have any understanding of a human being who doesn't respect the beauty of life and that goes for all creatures that have thoughts, feelings and needs.
Women's rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda, trained on the equal dignity and ability to live in freedom all people should enjoy.