“Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect.”
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Wangari Maathai 9
Kenyan environmental and political activist 1940–2011Related quotes

Comeback & Beyond: How to Turn Your Setback into Your Comeback (2010)

As quoted in The Forbes Book of Business Quotations (2007) edited by Ted Goodman, p. 175

“It is the thing protected, not the instrument of protection, that involves you in war.”
Speech on the Increase of the Navy, House of Representatives (22 January 1812).
Context: Sir, if you wish to avoid foreign commerce; give up all your prosperity. It is the thing protected, not the instrument of protection, that involves you in war. Commerce engenders collision, collision war, and war, the argument supposes, leads to despotism. Would the councils of that statesman be deemed who would recommend that the nation should be unarmed—that in the art of war, the material spirit, and martial exercises, should be prohibited—…—and that the great body of the people should be taught that the national happiness was to be found in perpetual peace alone? No, sir.
Quoted in Tony Gonzalez and Mitzi Dulan, The All-Pro Diet: Lose Fat, Build Muscle, and Live Like a Champion (Rodale Books, 2009), ch. 1.

On aiming to write multifaceted characters in “Meet Tomi Adeyemi: the politically-charged author you need to know about in 2019” https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/culture-news/a26933188/tomi-adeyemi-interview/ in Harper’s Bazaar (2019 Mar 26)

About changing congress http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac9j15eig_w (c. 1977)
Context: It's nice to elect the right people, but that isn't the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.

“There's no such thing as addiction, there's only things that you enjoy doing more than life.”
Before Turning the Gun on Himself (2012)