#rights

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#education #evil #good #humane #morality

Why should the spread of ideas and people result in reforms that lower violence? There are several pathways. The most obvious is a debunking of ignorance and superstition. A connected and educated populace, at least in aggregate and over the long run, is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain. The recent debunking of beliefs that invite or tolerate violence call to mind Voltaire's quip that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#religion #education

You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

We support President Truman's civil rights program. ↗

— Eugenie Anderson

#civil rights #president #program #rights #support

Remember, the change you want to see in the world, and in your school, begins with you. ↗

— Joseph Clementi

#equality #gay-rights #human-rights #change

I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#equality #freedom #gender #independence #men

The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others. ↗

— Julian Bond

#human-rights #equality

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other man every right he claims for himself. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#equality #human-rights #progress #equality

[Button] If Gay and Lesbian people are given civil rights, soon everyone will want them ↗

— James Howe

#gay #gay-rights #glbt #equality

The day may come when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? ↗

— Jeremy Bentham

#jeremy-bentham #equality