In American prisons, which are extraordinarily violent places, the most vicious form of punishment is simply to lock a person in an empty room for years with absolutely nothing to do. This emptying of...

So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.

There are other grounds for believing that gays and lesbians should be respected and protected from oppression: their right to privacy and freedom of action and expression; the "victimless" nature of...

On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil learned a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as...

I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.

No matter what they say in the conferences and symposiums about poverty and hunger in the world. At the end, they are the first one forgetting us.

There was a problem: No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth — hoped for and celebrated in all the newspapers, invoked by zealous bureaucrats in every...

She was eight years old, with the body of a child, but her spirit was weighed down by an adult suffering.

Justice is a necessity for a fair and free society.

There are 2 - 3 million prostitutes in India, and although many of them now sell sex to some degree willingly, and are paid, a significant share of them entered the sex industry unwillingly.

When water fountains start charging to drink, then you know we have a problem.

This is my country, that is your country; these are the conceptions of narrow souls - to the liberal minded the whole world is a family.

A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.

For me, no ideological or political conviction would justify the sacrifice of a human life. For me, the value of life is absolute, with no concessions. It's not negotiable.

Religion is deeply intertwined with a person's cultural identity. Hence, trying to take it away, is not only unethical from a humane standpoint, but also it is immoral and downright inhuman.

Oppression has been in existence as long as man himself has been in existence.

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 this wordliness.

men and women desperate enough to risk death to express their wishes.19

«In memory of the countless men and women of all creeds, nations, and races who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in the Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.»

That Staryk wanted to take her for nothing. He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that...

Silence is what allows people to suffer without recourse, what allows hypocrisies and lies to grow and flourish, crimes to go unpunished. If our voices are essential aspects of our humanity, to be...

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism or self-interest, to impoverish,...

More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade...

However, Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN peacekeepers, refused to obey his orders to leave and remained with a couple hundred soldiers. He was a brave and moral man, but he...

I feel worse than I have ever done before, because now I know that it is easier to take a country into war than to bring it to live at peace, and a country at war is a bitter place to live, a risky...

Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for the murder of the helpless. In securing any kind of peace, the first essential is to guarantee to every man the most...

The truth is that torture creates the torturers

For all our mythologizing, the margins can be painful and some people are there because they have no choice.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

Dieting was cruel; it was an abuse of human rights. Yes, that's what it was, and she should not allow herself to be manipulated in this way. She stopped herself. Thinking like that was nothing more...