The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you’re asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.
“These are the rights of all human beings. They are yours wherever you are. Demand that your rulers and politicians sign and observe this declaration. If they refuse, if they quibble, they can have no place in the new free world that dawns upon mankind.”
The Rights of the World Citizen (1942); a revised edition of The Rights of Man
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H. G. Wells 142
English writer 1866–1946Related quotes
Source: On 30 August 2018, De Lille spoke to 130 residents of a women's shelter in Cape Town. As quoted by Dave Chambers in Like you‚ I will survive‚ De Lille tells abused women https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-08-30-like-you-i-will-survive-de-lille-tells-abused-women/. TimesLIVE, (30 August 2018)
"Nihilism On A Religious Soil" (6 May 1907); it should be noted here that Berdyaev is here defining "theocracy" not in the sense as it is often used, of people ruling over other people, in claims of doing so by the commands of God, but rather defining it in terms of Christian anarchism — as a vigorous assertion of the right of no-one to rule over humans, save God.
Context: The new religious consciousness rises up against the nihilistic attitude towards the world and mankind. If a religious rebirth be possible, only then on this soil will there be the revealing of the religious meaning of secular culture and earthly liberation, the revealing of the truth about mankind. For the new religious consciousness the declaration of the will of God is together with this a declaration of the rights of man, a revealing of the Divine within mankind. We believe in the objective, the cosmic might of the truth of God, in the possibility according to God to guide the earthly destiny of mankind. This will be the victory of the true theocracy, whether over a false democratism, — the apotheosis of the quantitative collectivity of human wills, or so also over the false theocraticism, — all that apotheosis of the human will within Caesaropapism or Papocaesarism. Christ cannot have human vicarage in the person of the tsar or high-priest. He — is Himself the Tsar and High-Priest, and He will reign in the world. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.”
Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/12/funmi-falana-tells-nigerians-to-defend-their-human-rights/ Funmi Falana speaks on human right.
“All mankind, right down to those you most despise, are your neighbors.”
"Lost in Non-Translation" (1989), in Magic (Voyager, 1997) p. 270
General sources
“Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world.”
As quoted in The Thought and Character of William James (1935) by Ralph Barton Perry, Vol. II, ch. 91
1890s
"Workers of the World Awaken"