Quotes by Human Rights Activists - Page 2

I don’t want to be an anti, against anybody. I simply want to be the builder of a great affirmation: the affirmation of God,who loves us and who wants to save us.
Oscar A. Romero
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
Hélder Câmara
Under the broken promises of superpowers and under the worlds indifference to spilled Arab blood.
Susan Abulhawa
I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end...
Ishmael Beah
The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.
Oscar A. Romero
There is more than one way to be Kluxed, and we need to think about ourselves and the kind of people we elect into public office.
Stetson Kennedy
I loved her in spite of myself. I loved her immeasurably.Infinitely. And I feared that love as much as I feared my own fury at theworld.
Susan Abulhawa
You and I are the remains of an unfulfilled legacy, heirs to a kingdom of stolen identities and ragged confusion.
Susan Abulhawa
I was sad to leave, but I was also pleased to have met people outside of Sierra Leone. Because if I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world.
Ishmael Beah
The bed sheet brigade is bad enough, but the real threat to Americans and human rights today is the plain clothes Klux in the halls of government and certain black-robed Klux on court benches.
Stetson Kennedy
I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, Why have I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family to be alive? I didn’t know.
Ishmael Beah
Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?
Susan Abulhawa
What you have learned from experience is worth much more than gold. If you have a house it may burn down. Any kind of possession can be lost, but your experience is yours forever. Keep it and find a way to use it.
Somaly Mam
Many crumble and forget their morals when presented with their pieces of silver. Standing up for what you believe has real dignity too.
Fuad Alakbarov
Always" is a good word to believe in.
Susan Abulhawa
Who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.
Ishmael Beah
I am always quiet so that I know what to say when I must speak.
Ishmael Beah
I put my hands behind my head and lay on my back, trying to hold on to the memories of my family. Their faces seemed to be far off somewhere in my mind, and to get to them I had to bring up painful memories.
Ishmael Beah
In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party.
Hélder Câmara
Death, in its certainty, is exacting its due respect and repose before it takes my hand.
Susan Abulhawa
This is what the war has done to me. Now I want to destroy because of it. There is such hate and rage inside me now. The Angkar has taught me to hate so deeply that I now know I have the power to destroy and kill.
Loung Ung
We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood,the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.
Oscar A. Romero
Sometimes you can learn, even from a bad experience. By coping you become stronger. The pain does not go away, but it becomes manageable.
Somaly Mam
If there is some corner of the world which has remained peaceful, but with a peace based on injustices the peace of a swamp with rotten matter fermenting in its depths - we may be sure that that peace is false. Violence attracts violence. Let us repeat fearlessly and ceaselessly: injustices bring revolt, either from the oppressed or from the young, determined to fight for a more just and more human world.
Hélder Câmara
I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover happiness I had known as a child, the joy that had stayed alive inside me even through times when being alive itself became a burden. These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.
Ishmael Beah
So let us recognise our shame and guilt; let us ache with self-reflection; let us eradicate the repetition of suffering and resist anger; let us learn to concretely tend to the suffering of an individual, of our common citizens, with equality; let us learn to live life with honour and dignity and a wealth of humanity.
Xiaobo Liu
I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it.
Loung Ung
A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of Godthat does not get under anyone's skin or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in whichit is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?
Oscar A. Romero