Quotes about right (10000 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I know that I'm not that important to you But to me, girl, you're so much more than gorgeous So much more than perfect Right now I know that I'm not really worth it”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Song Star Shopping, Album: LiL PEEP; PART ONE

Girl , Perfection

“You're right. I am crazy. But you know what else? I don't care.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“I strongly believe that, as a citizen of the world, any person has the right to learn”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Education for All People and Education for Life

World , Learning , Personality

“We are what the past has made us. We are what the future will make us. Live now. Right now.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Past , Future , Making love

“Since we all came from a women, got our name from a women, and our game from a women. I wonder why we take from women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think its time we killed for our women, be real to our women, try to heal our women, cus if we dont we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies, who make the babies. And since a man can't make one he has no right to tell a women when and where to create one”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Women , Hate , Game , Thinking

“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Fear

“The task of the teacher has come to an end and it is the right time for the student to outshine the master.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Time , Teachers

“I believe in equal rights for everyone. I think God loves all”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

Twitter response to anti-gay religious group Westboro Baptist Church picketing a One Direction concert (19 July 2013) https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/westboro-baptist-church-one-direction_n_3634663
Context: Despite the company outside, I believe in equal rights for everyone. I think God loves all. Thanks for coming to the show though.

Love , God , Thinking

“A TV evening with the right person can be more erotic than sex with the wrong one. ”

Ville Valo (1976) Finnish rock musician

Sex , Personality

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be… When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner"… I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: "Freedom to learn" (1969), p.236.
Source: A Way of Being

People

“What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Waiting to die in old age will not benefit anyone if you have wasted your youth and do not want to change anything right now.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Waiting , Youth , Age , Change

“You can't find the right roads when the streets are paved.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Reported in Janelle Rohr, Animal rights: opposing viewpoints (1989), p. 100; Jane Goodall and Jennifer Lindsey, Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe (1999), p. 6. Occasionally misreported in truncated form, as "The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves", in, e.g., quote honored on XOEarth eco money http://xoearth.org/jane-goodall/

Hope , Dead

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Reported in Yolanda Brooks, Do Animals Have Rights? (2008), p. 23

Powerful , People , Change

“I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that's bad, I'm going to suffer from it. But in my mind, I believe what I'm doing is right. So I feel like I'm going to heaven”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Feeling , Suffering

“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in… A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals

Justice , Sense

“Marlon Brando is not a gangster-actor, he's an actor. Axl Rose and them are not gangster rock-and-rollers, they're rock-and-rollers right. So I'm a rapper, this is what I do. I'm an artist.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, MTV interview with Tabitha Soren (1995)

“You must never be fearful of what you are doing when it is right.”

Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist

Fear

“With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.”

William of Ockham (1285–1349) medieval philosopher and theologian

Variant: The simplest explanation is usually the right one

“Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school, why is it important for them. But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they have this right to go to school.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (December 10, 2014)

People , School , Girl , Question

“I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Variant: being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.
Source: Women

“All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

“I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Fools

“While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, French-man, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

1920s, Zweites Buch (1928)
Source: Mein Kampf
Context: Jewry is a Folk with a racial core that is not wholly unitary. Nevertheless, as a Folk, it has special intrinsic characteristics which separate it from all other Folks living on the globe. Jewry is not a religious community, but the religious bond between Jews; rather is in reality the momentary governmental system of the Jewish Folk. The Jew has never had a territorially bounded State of his own in the manner of Aryan States. Nevertheless, his religious community is a real State, since it guarantees the preservation, the increase and the future of the Jewish Folk. But this is solely the task of the State. That the Jewish State is subject to no territorial limitation, as is the case with Aryan States, is connected with the character of the Jewish Folk, which is lacking in the productive forces for the construction and preservation of its own territorial State.

World , Confidence , Sense , Universe

“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

15 July 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Graduation , For Parents , Parent , Personality

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

People , Learning , Change

“If people hate you, then you're probably doing something right”

Amy Lee (1981) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Hate , People

“I just like having fun. It's a very good release, rock music, but you know you say that I am a different person on stage and that same thing could be said of anyone going out to do his job. It's my work, and I'm very serious about it, getting it right - when we began, we approached it the way we did because we were not prepared to be out-of-work musicians, ever. We said either take it on as a serious commodity or don't do it at all.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

"The Man Who Would Be Queen" in Melody Maker (2 May 1981) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_05-02-1981_-_Melody_Maker.

Music , Way , Personality

“We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 33.

Justice , Fight , Parting

“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"Chimpanzees - Bridging the Gap", in Paola Cavalieri, Peter Singer, The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1996), p. 14

Thinking

“I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Idea , Suicide

“What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.

Sadness , Music , Laughter , Fight

“Competition is dangerous, socially offensive, considered right and normal, because you are brought up to that value system. What kind of competition did Jesus have? What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said, "I'm the most important organ!" And the liver said, "I am. And I want a Free Enterprise system!"”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

You'd rot away in a month if every organ of your body went out for itself.
1974 Larry King Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVOPkGAtt48

“Los Prisioneros were always right: for the 'gringos,' Latin America is still just one country south of the United States.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: "La Otra Historia". Radiorama de Occidente. 1480 AM. Guadalajara, Mexico.

Country

“Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

World

“If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Money

“Percy: Don't I get a kiss for luck? It's kind of a tradition, right?
Annabeth: Come back alive, Seaweed Brain. Then we'll see.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Kiss

“All the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. Why is this so? Basically, because the nature of the hands and feet is such that the energy system finds expression in these two parts of the body in a very singular way. Two palms coming together have far more intimacy than the contact between any other parts of the body. You can try this with yourself. You don’t even need a partner. When you put your hands together, the two energy dimensions within you (right-left, masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, yin-yang, etc.) are linked in a certain way, and you begin to experience a sense of unity within yourself. This is the logic of the traditional Indian namaskar. It is a means of harmonizing the system. So, the simplest way to experience a state of union is to try this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together, and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life that you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be the same again. There is even a possibility that if you put your hands together, you could unite the world!”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love , Life , World , Way

“Enlightenment is understanding that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody you have to be except exactly who you're being right now.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Source: Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1

Understanding

“Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

“Do not wait; the time will never be "just right."”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
Source: Think and Grow Rich (1938), p. 127

Success , Motivational , Business , Powerful

“I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Life , Suicide , Success

“And we'll be right back after these messages, fellas grab ya nuttsacks chicks squeeze your breastsess, we ain't all that grown it's still funny like goin to the store with your own rainbow money, since that had an insane flow sonny”

MF Doom (1971) hip hop artist from America

With DANGERDOOM, "Old School", The Mouse and the Mask (2005)
Sourced Lines

Money

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life , Death , Money , People

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Death , Fate , Imagination , Sense

“Beat it, beat it,
No-one wants to be defeated,
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight,
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right.
Just beat it.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Thriller (1982)

Strong , Fight

“I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the left and is now in the centre of politics.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Letter to The Times (26 April, 1968), p. 11.

“I try to do what's right for me,
But no-one sees the way I see,
And then I try to please them so,
But how far can this pleasing go?”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Destiny (1977)

Way

“Behold, my brothers, the spring has come; the earth has received the embraces of the sun and we shall soon see the results of that love! Every seed has awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5712889.Sitting_Bull
Attributed quotes

Sun , Spring , Animals , Love

“Listen, if you guys wanna move around and shift your asses a little, it's okay. It's okay by us, right? You can take all your clothes off if you like too, doesn't matter... Fuck off!”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

laughs
During a concert in Montreal, Canada, (24 or 25 November 1981), first released as videotape We Will Rock You (1984) http://www.ultimatequeen.co.uk/Videos/wewillrock.htm, and later on DVD as Queen Rock Montreal (2007).

Guy , Clothes

“So far as it goes, the distinction, between an atrocity and an act of war is valid. An atrocity means an act of terrorism which has no genuine military purpose. One must accept such distinctions if one accepts war at all, which in practice everyone does. Nevertheless, a world in which it is wrong to murder an individual and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this planet of hours is not a loony-bin made use of by some other planet.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune, (31 December 1943)
As I Please (1943–1947)

War , World

“Do not wait; the time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Variant: Do not wait: the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.
Source: Think and Grow Rich (1938), p. 127
Context: Do not wait; the time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

Success , Motivational , Business , Powerful

“Revolt is the right of the people”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

People

“I think you can love a person too much.

You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love , Thinking , Time , Personality

“The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Men , Intelligence , Thinking

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

Question , Personality

“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.”

Peter Marshall (1902–1949) American preacher

Thinking , Freedom

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Sometimes paraphrased as "Liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear."
Variant: Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Source: Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison

People

“If you are pissing people off, you know you are doing something right”

John Lydon book Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

Source: Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

People

“196. "Look on the bright side, suicide
Lost eyesight I'm on your side
Angel left wing, right wing, broken wing
Lack of iron and/or sleeping
Protector of the kennel
Ecto-plasma, Ecto-skeletal
Obituary birthday
Your scent is still here in my place of recovery!" ~”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Angels , Birthday , Suicide , Sleep

“A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Love , Life , Feeling , Sense

“What people thought of as a struggle between right and wrong was just a struggle between two rights”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

People

“After a year and half Mamu told me if you see anything don’t talk about it. One night I was playing deep in meditation. I smelled something. It was an indescribable scent, something like sandalwood and jasmine. I thought it was the aroma of Ganges but the scent got more powerful. When I opened my eyes, there was Balaji standing right next to me, exactly as he is pictured. My door was locked from inside; nobody was allowed to enter when I did riyaz.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

He said ‘play my son’ but I was sweating. I stopped playing.
Khan used to do riyaz (practice) before the temple of Balaji as advised by his mamu (maternal uncle) who had also told him not talk to any body about anything that might happen. But when he told his mamu about his seeing Balaji, mamu was annoyed and slapped him.
Quote, Power Profiles

Night

“Your butt is mine
Gonna tell you right
Just show your face
In broad daylight”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Bad (1987)

“From my upbringing and the Bible I learned people should stand up for rights just as the children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quoted in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis (2013)

Children , People , Learning

“He who is running a race ought to endeavor and strive to the utmost of his ability to come off victor; but it is utterly wrong for him to trip up his competitor, or to push him aside. So in life it is not unfair for one to seek for himself what may accrue to his benefit; but it is not right to take it from another.”

Chrysippus (-281–-208 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

As quoted in De Officiis by Cicero, iii. 10.

Life

“God has always given me the strength to say what is right… I had the strength of God and my ancestors with me.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quoted in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis (2013)

God

“(on the perceived need for cautious political development): "We are the High Chiefs of these islands. We are the leaders of the people. On us is the duty of pointing out to them the right course. Bear this in mind. We have to lead on two points- hold back those who advocate radical changes (for which we are not sufficiently educated) and enliven the laggards before their ignorance destroys us."”

Lala Sukuna (1888–1958) Chief of Lau and civil servant in Fiji

1936 speeches to the Great Council of Chiefs

People , Education , Change

“Success comes on God’s terms, in His time, and in His way. God only allowed me to have success after I’d been broken, after I’d stopped seeking success for myself, and after I’d come to terms with the idea that my labors for God might not ever bring me a penny. It was only after I’d lost everything that God was able to get my heart right to the point where He could trust me with success.”

Scott Cawthon (1971) American independent video game designer

God , Way , Idea , Time

“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”

Bernard Baruch (1870–1965) American businessman

Deming Headlight (New Mexico), 6 January 1950, as cited in the Yale Book of Modern Proverbs and at There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Facts; Freakonomics blog post by Fred R. Shapiro http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/18/there-are-opinions-and-then-there-are-facts/ (18 August 2011)

“Anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best things she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing — the part of her that was clean.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 26

Children , Beauty , Parting

“Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear.”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

From 1999 interview.
Noted in the October 2003 BBC News profile of Ebadi. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3181992.stm (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

Death , Fear , Birth , Learning

“No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection, until it have been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorise the punishment of a citizen, so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? The dilemma is frequent. Either he is guilty, or not guilty. If guilty, he should only suffer the punishment ordained by the laws, and torture becomes useless, as his confession is unnecessary. If he be not guilty, you torture the innocent; for, in the eye of the law, every man is innocent, whose crime has not been proved.”

Cesare Beccaria book On Crimes and Punishments

On Crimes and Punishments (1764)

Law , Suffering

“Nine, nine… There have been nine men there for a long, long time, right? So why not nine women?”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

In response to the question “How many women would be enough” [on the Supreme Court] during interview https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/chat-women-supreme-court-11976773 with Diane Sawyer at The Women’s Conference (Long Beach, California, October 26, 2010)

Women , Men , Time

“Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up?' 'Because it cannot be helped as they are stronger than women.' 'A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.”

Begum Rokeya Sultana's Dream

Sultana's Dream (1905)

Women , Nature , Help

“They print my message in the Saturday Sun,
I had to tell them I ain't second to none,
And I told about equality,
And its true, either you're wrong or you're right.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Black or White
Dangerous (1991)

Sun

“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics (1931)

Law , Future

“You say that workin is what a man's supposed to do.
But I say you ain't right if I can't give sweet love to you.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Off the Wall (1979)

Love

“With a bronze mirror, one can see whether he is properly attired; with history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of a nation; with men as a mirror, one can see whether he is right or wrong. Now I've lost my faithful mirror by the death of Weizheng.”

Emperor Taizong of Tang (598–649) emperor of the Tang Dynasty

Quoted in: Yanqing Vanessa Ong et al. Memories unfolded: a guide to memories at Old Ford Factory, 2008, p. 50
Quoted regarding his advisor.Few men in history would be so frank and honest with their monarch and when Weizheng died, Taizong was overwhelmed with grief. The Emperor said to his ministers,

Death , Men , Faith , History

“Cause there's a time when you're right
And you know you must fight,
Who's laughing, baby? Don't you know?
And there's a choice that we make,
And a choice you must take,
Who's laughing, baby?”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Bad (1987)

Time , Fight , Baby

“Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality — its universality; if it is wrong they cannot justly insist upon its extension — its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought Slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?
Wrong as we think Slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States?
If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored — contrivances such as groping for middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man — such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care — such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance — such as invocations of Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington did.

Thinking , Dependency

“A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

pg 9.
Science in a Free Society (1978)
Context: A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because the importance the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.

“We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102777
Leader of the Opposition
Context: Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.

“Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.... Humanity is in ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Universe

“What else could I write, I don't have the right.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

“What’s good for individual could be bad for society but what’s good for society that will be good for individual and there is always need to choose what right for society because if it is right for society then it is right for individual.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

"Humanity", Ch.VII, "Humanity: A Way Forward" Part VI

Bad luck

“I want people to unite behind the science… And that is what we have to realize, that that is what we have to do right now.. I’m not the one who’s saying these things. I’m not the one who we should be listening to. And I say that all the time. I say we need to listen to the scientists.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

We Are Striking to Disrupt the System: An Hour with 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/11/greta_thunberg_swedish_activist_climate_crisis, DemocracyNow (11 September 2019)
2019

Science , Time , People