#rights

John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university. ↗

— Russell Banks

#anti-war #brown #chapel #chapel hill #civil

Fifty percent of our country that we own, have all legal jurisdiction, have all rights to do whatever we want, lies beneath the sea and we have better maps of Mars than that 50 percent. ↗

— Robert Ballard

#better #country #fifty #fifty percent #jurisdiction

In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story. ↗

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#black americans #book #civil #civil rights #context

I try to do that in this book without preaching - to try to do as you just said that you really have to defend the First Amendment rights of everybody. ↗

— Floyd Abrams

#amendment rights #book #defend #everybody #first

The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal applicability and its thiswordliness. ↗

— Immanuel Wallerstein

#capitalism #human-rights #religion #universalism #religion

[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?" I notice that I don't hear from them much lately. ↗

— Tracy Hickman

#gay-rights #intolerance #science-fiction #science

Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake--you know, to send the right message to kids. ↗

— Bill Maher

#gay-rights #law

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.' 'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. 'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last. Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#freedom #happiness #rights #unhappiness #freedom

But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me! ↗

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

#human-rights #racism #slavery #social-justice #slavery

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me. ↗

— Martin Niemöller

#compassion #cowardice #diversity #human-rights #diversity