Quotes About Human-rights

There is no question that a belief system can have positive, transformative effects on people's lives. Many current and former Scientologists have attested to the value of their training and the insight they derived from their study of the religion. They have the right to believe whatever they choose. But it is a different matter to use the protections afforded a religion by the First Amendment to falsify history, to propagate forgeries, and to cover up human-rights abuses.

Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years.

In 2006, I published my first novel, 'In the Country of Men.' The publication of the book gave me a bigger platform to speak about my father's abduction and Libya's human-rights record.

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It's when you go backwards through the 'begats' and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, 'Hang on, that's a big punishment for eating one lousy apple... There's a human-rights issue.'

I do not think that war is always wrong: sometimes it is necessary to stop a dictator, prevent massive human-rights abuses, or expel an invader. But I have also seen that in the modern world, civil wars are the greatest threat to humanitarian security.

Lots of human-rights tragedies deserve concerts, but there's something extra with Tibet. It's a spiritual culture, a country rooted in humility and compassion. And among artists, there's a lot of Buddhists, people who want an alternative to basic Christianity, which doesn't offer much.

What my Republican colleagues often don't understand is that labor is a human-rights issue. I have to remind them Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement brought down the Communist bloc.

It is hard to know exactly when the Arab Spring, a phrase used to describe the beginning of the Arab peoples' demand for democracy and human-rights reform, started.

People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale. Fortunately, political and religious leaders stopped barbecuing astronomers for saying so, turning their spits with human-rights activists instead.

It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.

Gita Sahgal, who organised the Asian feminists who protested in defence of Salman Rushdie in Parliament Square in 1989. After her employer, the human-rights group Amnesty International, required her to leave for complaining to the press about its alliances with Islamists, her lawyers secured compensation for her.