Against fracking in the Karoo, 3 May 2011
Speaking & Features
“We physicians have focused on the nuclear threat as the singular issue of our era. We are not indifferent to other human rights and hard-won civil liberties. But first we must be able to bequeath to our children the most fundamental of all rights, which preconditions all others; the right to survival.”
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance (1985)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Bernard Lown 23
American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and… 1921–2021Related quotes
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Speech (October 10, 2014)
Greeting to the American Committee for Protection of Foreign-born (9 January 1940); later inscribed on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.
1940s
1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)
Context: In our system, the first right and most vital of all our fights is the right to vote. Jefferson described the elective franchise as "the ark of our safety." It is from the exercise of this right that the guarantee of all our other rights flows. Unless the right to vote be secure and undenied, all other rights are insecure and subject to denial for all our citizens. The challenge to this right is a challenge to America itself. We must meet this challenge as decisively as we would meet a challenge mounted against our land from enemies abroad.
Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2
"On Syria (And All Else), It's 'Us' Against 'Them'" http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/on-syria-and-all-else-its-us-against.html Economic Policy Journal, September 7, 2013.
2010s, 2013
Speaking on right-to-work laws in 1961, as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s
Context: In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right to work.' It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. It is supported by Southern segregationists who are trying to keep us from achieving our civil rights and our right of equal job opportunity. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.
Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils, chapter 4, p.90 (1913).
1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)