Today we are less likely to speak of humanitarianism, with its overtones of paternalistic generosity, and more likely to speak of human rights. The basic freedoms in life are not seen as gifts to be doled out by benevolent well-wishers, but as Casement said at his trial, as those rights to which all human beings are entitled from birth. It is this spirit which underlies organizations like Amnesty International, with its belief that putting someone in prison solely for his or her opinion is a crime, whether it happens in China or Turkey or Argentina and Medecins Sans Frontieres, with its belief that a sick child is entitled to medical care, whether in Rwanda or Honduras or the South Bronx. Adam Hochschild
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. - John F. Kennedy
  2. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe. - Elie Wiesel
  3. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory. - Franklin D. Roosevelt
  4. Peygamber dedi: 'Kadın akıllılara ve gönül sahiplerine tam galip gelir. Cahillerse kadına üstün olur, çünkü onlar sert ve serkeş davranır.' İncelik, letafet ve insaf onlarda az bulunur, çünkü tabiatlarında hayvanlık galiptir. Sevgi ve incelik, insanlık vasfıdır. Öfke ve şehvet, hayvanlık vasfıdır. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>O, Hakk'ın... - Jalaluddin Rumi
  5. We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought. - Kathryn Stockett
More Quotes By Adam Hochschild
  1. Most striking about the traditional societies of the Congo was their remarkable artwork: baskets, mats, pottery, copper and ironwork, and, above all, woodcarving. It would be two decades before Europeans really noticed this art. Its discovery then had a strong influence on Braque, Matisse, and...
  2. So eager were its officials that the German government had telegraphed its ambassador in St. Petersburg two declarations of war to be delivered to Russia's foreign minister: one if Russia did not reply to its ultimatum, the other rejecting the Russian reply as unsatisfactory. In...
  3. Self-government is our right, " [Roger Casement] declared. "A thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself - than the right to feel the...
  4. Today we are less likely to speak of humanitarianism, with its overtones of paternalistic generosity, and more likely to speak of human rights. The basic freedoms in life are not seen as gifts to be doled out by benevolent well-wishers, but as Casement said at...
  5. The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
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