Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.
Elihu Root

I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.
James Earl Jones

When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law.
Patricia Ireland

We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.
Barbara Boxer

Lawyers should not be charged with the same crimes as their clients. Trials related to political charges are not in accordance with human rights.
Shirin Ebadi

There is a strong correlation between belief in evolution and liberal views on government control, pornography, prayer in schools, abortion, gun control, economic freedom, and even animal rights.
Phyllis Schlafly

While all of these are important and significant events, it is the United States' foreign policy that furthers the advancement of freedoms and rights for women that is the most striking for me.
Ginny B. Waite

Most governments in Latin America have failed to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their right to their own traditional territories.
Bianca Jagger

We have a human rights interest. Then there is the immigration problem. The human-rights violations have caused people to take to boats and flood not only the United States, but other countries in the region, creating great instability.
Warren Christopher

I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.
Richard Attenborough

With so many of our fundamental rights hanging in the balance, it is not good enough to simply roll the dice, hoping a nominee has changed his past views. It's not good enough to think, 'This is the best we can expect from this president'.
Barbara Boxer

God willing, we shall come to a stage where the world looks at the Palestinian question, and Palestinian rights on Palestinian national soil, as well as the questions of the occupied Syrian and Lebanese territories. These are the bases on which peace will be built.
King Hussein I

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men.
William Godwin

Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.
Michael N. Castle

It is distressing to me that we live in an age in which we still must fight to protect our civil rights as Americans, in which a hate crime perpetrated against someone based their sexual orientation can go unpunished, and in which discrimination is being written into our laws.
John Conyers

I came at age in the '60s, and initially my hopes and dreams were invested in politics and the movements of the time - the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement. I worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign for president as a teenager in California and the night he was killed.
David Talbot

Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.
Iris Chang

What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.
Phyllis Schlafly

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.
Carol Moseley Braun

It was the best route to get folks to understand segregation fast. Civil rights and women's rights had a clear history. Making the transition to rights for people with disabilities became easier because we had the history of the other two.
Major Owens