Labour Rights Quotes

[D]emanding wages for housework (…) forced recognition of the fact that the domestic work which women do has economic value. But many feminists feel that this demand leaves untouched the sexual division of labour - indeed, measures like paid maternity leave (…) can be seen as a form of'wages for motherhood' but(…) it fixes women more rigidly into work defined as 'women's work'. ~ Nivedita Menon

You talk about the Pro-Life movement being one of the great shames of our nation. I think, if you want number two, I think - I think it's that. I think it's absolute - it's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights. ~ Jon Stewart

Ni dieu ni maître!

(Neither God nor master)

[Feminist and labour slogan translated to 'No gods, no masters'] ~ Louis-Auguste Blanqui

Being a better dialectician meant not only being skillful at invention or at denouncing tricks in reasoning. Before anything else, it meant knowing how to dialogue, together with all the demands that this entails: recognizing the presence and the rights of one's interlocutor, basing one's replies on what the interlocutor admits he knows, and therefore agreeing with him at each stage of the discussion. Above all, it meant submitting oneself to the demands and norms of reason and the search for truth; finally, it meant recognizing the absolute value of the Good. It therefore meant leaving behind one's individual point of view, in order to rise to a universal viewpoint; and it meant trying to see things within the perspective of the All and the deity, thereby transforming one's vision of the world and one's own inner attitude. ~ Pierre Hadot

If you're willing to give your life to defend my rights, you can have sex with a pie and I will heat it up for you. ~ Wil Anderson

[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence. ~ Frederick Douglass

You humans drink our milk and eat the eggs of the chickens and the ducks. Isn't that enough for you? Isn't it enough that we give you our children and what's meant for our children? And if not, when is it enough? All you humans do is take, take, take from the earth and its beautiful creatures, and what do you give back? Nothing. I know humans consider it a grave insult to be called an animal. Well, I would never give a human the fine distinction of being called an animal, because an animal may kill to live but an animal never lives to kill. Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again. ~ David Duchovny

Who charges a deranged gunman like that? They're perfect gentlemen, those Tracey boys. Do they ever do anything wrong? 'Dudley Do-Rights,' both of those fuckers. Still, I hope Kenny's still alive. ~ Mark M. Bello

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. ~ A.J. Liebling

The Bill of Rights is largely a prescription for preventing government from restricting the flow of information and ideas. But the Founding Fathers did not foresee that tyranny by government might be superseded by another sort of problem altogether, namely, the corporate state, which through television now controls the flow of public discourse in America. I raise no strong objection to this fact (at least not here) and have no intention of launching into a standard-brand complaint against the corporate state. I merely note the fact with apprehension, as did George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, when he wrote:

Television is the new state religion run by a private Ministry of Culture (the three networks), offering a universal curriculum for all people, financed by a form of hidden taxation without representation. You pay when you wash, not when you watch, and whether or not you care to watch. ~ Neil Postman

Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever. ~ Joseph Priestley

It does not help when an administration, in response to American attacks on American soil and American individuals, the administration ends up asking Americans to give up their First Amendment rights for which our service members are fighting. ~ Louie Gohmert

The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. ~ Ron Paul

Women deserve better than organizations bearing the names of racist rapists funding million dollar campaigns on subway trains. These wealthy middle aged white men tell us what to do with our bodies while they wage wars and kill other people's babies. ~ Sonya Renee Taylor

I would like the refugee crisis to become a new beginning in the Turkish-European relationship. But it would be very problematic if, during this process, human rights were forgotten. Democracy needs to be the priority. ~ Elif Safak

The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly. ~ Thomas Malthus

He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour. ~ Samuel Smiles

Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I realised what a powerful position you are in if you own the rights to your film because then you control the distribution and I ended up getting 25 million viewers for McLibel and that's what it's all about for me. ~ Franny Armstrong

The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame. ~ Christopher Hitchens

If gay Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break. That is my opinion. ~ Jeanne Phillips

It is becoming plain that our liberal regime of equality and personal freedom depends, more than most theorists of liberalism have been willing to admit, on the existence and support of certain social assumptions and practices: the belief that each and every human being possesses great and inherent value, the willingness to respect the rights of others even at the cost of some disadvantages to one's self, the ability to defer some immediate benefits for the sake of long-range goals, and a regard for reason-giving and civility in public discourse. ~ Mary Ann Glendon

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. ~ Michelle Alexander

People have been on earth in our present form for only about 100,000 years, and in so many ways we're still ironing out our kinks. These turtles we've been traveling with, they outrank us in longevity, having earned three more zeros than we. They've got one hundred million years of success on their resume, and they've learned something about how to survive in the world. And this, I think, is part of it: they have settled upon peaceful career paths, with a stable rhythm. If humans could survive another one hundred million years, I expect we would no longer find ourselves riding bulls. It's not so much that I think animals have rights; it's more that I believe humans have hearts and minds- though I've yet to see consistent, convincing proof of either. Turtles may seem to lack sense, but they don't do senseless things. They're not terribly energetic, yet they do not waste energy… turtles cannot consider what might happen yet nothing turtles do threatens anyone's future. Turtles don't think about the next generation, but they risk and provide all they can to ensure that there will be one. Meanwhile, we profess to love our own offspring above all else, yet above all else it is they from whom we daily steal. We cannot learn to be more like turtles, but from turtles we could learn to be more human. That is the wisdom carried within one hundred million years of survival. What turtles could learn from us, I can't quite imagine. ~ Carl Safina

We were in a great, seething moment in the 1970s. There was a new Labour government and everything seemed full of hope ... But, as we got older and we saw how much women's behaviour contributed to what was wrong, we stopped being able to see ourselves purely as. ~ Helen Garner

One man's blasphemy doesn't override other people's free-speech rights, their freedom to publish, freedom of thought. ~ Dan Savage

Modern redistribution is built around a logic of rights and a principle of equal access to a certain number of goods deemed to be fundamental. ~ Thomas Piketty

You can't have occupation and human rights. ~ Christopher Hitchens

For me, fiscal realism is not a betrayal of Labour values; it is the foundation by which we win the trust of the public. ~ Douglas Alexander

In her only departure from her prepared text, Heckler added, "We must conquer AIDS before it affects the heterosexual population and the general population…. We have a very strong public interest in stopping AIDS before it spreads outside the risk groups, before it becomes an
overwhelming problem."

The statement infuriated organizers from AIDS groups who considered AIDS already an "overwhelming problem" and did not consider it a priority of AIDS research to stop the scourge only "before it affects the heterosexual population." Moreover, many gay leaders wondered who had determined that homosexuals were not part of the "general population" that so concerned the Secretary. ~ Randy Shilts

The Conservative Party have got to ask themselves, 'How do we persuade people who at the moment are voting Labour and Liberal Democrat to vote Conservative ~ Kenneth Clarke

Every single American - gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender - every single American deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our society. It's a pretty simple proposition. ~ Barack Obama

United we are humans, divided we are apes. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time. ~ Dionne Warwick

Rosa Parks' entire career has been one as working as a civil rights activist. ~ Douglas Brinkley

[We need to push] for what we want, not just what we can get. ~ Eleanor Smeal

In a sense, the well-meaning or the ill-meaning American who asks: "What more will the Negro want?" or "When will he be satisfied?" or "What will it take to make these demonstrations cease?" is asking the Negro to purchase something that already belongs to him by every concept of law, justice and our Judaeo-Christian heritage. Moreover, he is asking the Negro to accept half the loaf and to pay for that half by waiting willingly for the other half to be distributed in crumbs over a hard and protracted winter of injustice. I would like to ask those people who seek to apportion to us the rights they have always enjoyed whether they believe that the framers of the Declaration of Independence intended that liberty should be divided into installments, doled out on a deferred-payment plan. Did not nature create birth as a single process? Is not freedom the negation of servitude? Does not one have to end totally for the other to begin? ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments ... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments-that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity. ~ John Hospers

From a biological viewpoint, patriarchal religion denied women the natural rights of every other mammalian female: the right to choose her stud, to control the circumstances of her mating, to occupy and govern her own nest, or to refuse all males when preoccupied with the important business of raising her young. ~ Barbara G. Walker

Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse
is to sit here and do nothing. ~ Rita Dove

It is a shame that so many leaders spend their time pondering their rights as leaders instead of their awesome responsibilities as leaders. ~ James Hunter