Prisoners Rights Quotes

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. ~ Antonin Scalia

If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals.
Can we tell a new story? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Many social justice or social activist movements have been rooted in a position. A position is usually against something. Any position will call up its opposition. If I say up, it generates down. If I say right, it really creates left. If I say good, it creates bad. So a position creates its opposition. A stand is something quite distinct from that.

There are synonyms for "stand" such as "declaration" or "commitment," but let me talk for just a few moments about the power of a stand. A stand comes from the heart, from the soul. A stand is always life affirming. A stand is always trustworthy. A stand is natural to who you are. When we use the phrase "take a stand" I'm really inviting you to un-cover, or "unconceal," or recognize, or affirm, or claim the stand that you already are.

Stand-takers are the people who actually change the course of history and are the source of causing an idea's time to come. Mahatma Gandhi was a stand-taker. He took a stand so powerful that it mobilized millions of people in a way that the completely unpredictable outcome of the British walking out of India did happen. And India became an independent nation. The stand that he took… or the stand that Martin Luther King, Jr. took or the stand that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony took for women's rights - those stands changed our lives today. The changes that have taken place in history as a result of the stand-takers are permanent changes, not temporary changes. The ~ Lynne Twist

Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables us to turn our head this way and that, and begin to notice possibilities that our ancestors could not imagine, or didn't want us to imagine. By observing the accidental chain of events that led us here, we realise how our very thoughts and dreams took shape – and we can begin to think and dream differently. Studying history will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more options.
Movements seeking to change the world often begin by rewriting history, thereby enabling people to reimagine the future. Whether you want workers to go on a general strike, women to take possession of their bodies, or oppressed minorities to demand political rights – the first step is to retell their history. The new history will explain that 'our present situation is neither natural nor eternal. Things were different once. Only a string of chance events created the unjust world we know today. If we act wisely, we can change that world, and create a much better one.' This is why Marxists recount the history of capitalism; why feminists study the formation of patriarchal societies; and why African Americans commemorate the horrors of the slave trade. They aim not to perpetuate the past, but rather to be liberated from it. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

A blanket could be drenched in water, frozen, and then enjoyed like a giant cotton popsicle by prisoners of a gulag, who might consider this a tasty treat compared to what they normally eat. ~ Jarod Kintz

She sometimes talked about how liking girls is political and revolutionary and counter-cultural, all these names and terms that I didn't even know that I was supposed to know, and a bunch of other things I didn't really understand and I'm not sure that she did then, either - though she'd never have let on. I hadn't ever really thought about any of that stuff. I just liked girls because I couldn't help not to. I'd certainly never considered that someday my feelings might grant me access to a community of like-minded women. ~ Emily Danforth

So in addition to being overly reliant on politicians, blacks typically have poor political representation. "Pollsters have long known of the remarkable gap between the leaders and the led in black America," wrote Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. A 1985 survey found that most blacks favored the death penalty and prayer in public schools while most black leaders opposed these things. Most blacks opposed school busing, while most black leaders favored it. Three times as many blacks opposed abortion rights as their leaders did. Indeed, on many key social issues, blacks are more conservative than whites.31 ~ Jason L. Riley

There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history... [T]he detail of the formation of the American governments... may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven... it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses... Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.

[A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, 1787] ~ John Adams

This is not an accident. Progressivism is a mindset that favors the use of aggressive government force to solve social problems. Prison is one of its main tools. Prison is the threat behind every progressive edict. If you don't directly merit prison by violating a criminal statute, you can earn prison by interfering with a government agent enforcing progressive policies or by ignoring a court order to obey the law. A large number of prisoners are incarcerated either because they violated a progressive drug law or because their illegal drug habit drew them into a criminal lifestyle. ~ James Ostrowski

What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small. ~ Richard Mentor Johnson

That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character. ~ Pam Grier

Violence against women continues to persist as one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world. It is a threat to all women, and an obstacle to all our efforts for development, peace, and gender equality in all societies. Violence against women is always a violation of human rights; it is always a crime; and it is always unacceptable. Let us take this issue with the deadly seriousness that it deserves. ~ Ban Ki-moon

The erosion of privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment, written to protect us against unreasonable search and seizure, began in earnest under President George W. Bush. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

More than money, fame and romance, I crave for society. ~ Abhijit Naskar

People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others. ~ Ron Paul

We've got to listen to other people's voices, respect them, but keep in mind, and I believe in terms of the things that I've read in my lifetime, the Lord is not picking us. But because of how we respect human rights, because that we are a good force in the world, he wants America to be strong. ~ John Kasich

Palestine must be built up without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs.. Palestine is not Rhodesia ... 600,0000 Arabs live there, who before the sense of justice of the world have exactly the same rights to their homes as we have to our National Home. ~ Chaim Weizmann

You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat. ~ Ryan Adams

The free world led by the U.S. fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights. ~ Liu Xiaobo

The corrupt system made the ordinary citizen absolutely powerless and without rights ~ Sunday Adelaja

We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nations will rise and fall, but equality remains the ideal. The univeral aim is to achieve respect for the entire human race, not for the dominant few. ~ Carlos P. Romulo

In the Nation, there is law; in the Colony, there is only a concern with order. In the Nation, you have rights; in the Colony, you have commands. In the Nation, you are innocent until proven guilty; in the Colony, you are born guilty. ~ Chris Hayes

What we would like to do is change the world
make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute
the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words
we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend. ~ Dorothy Day

Justice is the alignment of societal laws with natural Law, and the righting of wrongs. Justice creates liberty. Justice maintains the character of love and can be said to be a product of right actions by a society. Things that are right promote the well-being of individual selves and societies. What is right can be said to always be just. If a society commits to justice by aligning societal laws with natural Law and respecting the rights of natural Law, then it will promote love through liberty. ~ C W Newman

When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state ~ Thomas Jefferson

I recall Ghandi said ultimately all things devolve into the political, but I'd argue that all things devolve into pro-people and anti-people. And I can pose the question, which side are you on? ~ Stetson Kennedy

Calvin: I'm being educated against my will! My rights are being trampled!
Hobbes: Is it a right to remain ignorant?
Calvin: I don't know, but I refuse to find out! ~ Bill Watterson

No man is fit to educate unless he feels each pupil an end in himself, with his own rights and his own personality, not merely a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, or a soldier in a regiment, or a citizen in a State. Reverence for human personality is the beginning of wisdom, in every social question but above all in education. ~ Bertrand Russell

In a lot of ways, I guess Satan was the first superhero." "Don't you mean supervillain?" "Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality. Sounds kind of like a cross between Animal Man and Dr. Phil to me." She ~ Joe Hill

The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it! We're up, above you. We were dependant on you just now, prisoners fawning on you for favors, for wind and light. But now, we are free. We are up! We are off! Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring- a sustained note of power and joy. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh