Animal Quotes

Know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us…

  • Rai Aren, Secret of the Sands

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

  • Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality

Belief Quotes

When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what’s left?

  • Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

Activism Quotes

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtfully committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

  • Margaret Mead

Civilization Quotes

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry … The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.

  • Will Durant, The Story of Civilization

Culture Quotes

It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual.

The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing

understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity.

– Robert Kennedy

Human Rights Quotes

We must be the change we wish
to see in the world.

  • Mahatma Gandhi

 

The world is getting too small for both an Us and a Them. Us and Them have

become co-dependent, intertwined, fixed to one another. We have no

separate fates, but are bound together in one. And our fear of

one another is the only thing capable of our undoing.

  • Sam Killermann

 

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

  • Nelson Mandela, South African civil rights activist

Defining religion or belief, including the right to non-religious beliefs

Religious and non-religious beliefs bring hope and consolation to billions of people across the globe, and hold great potential for peace and reconciliation.  They have also, however, been the source of great tension and conflict.  This complexity, and the difficulty of defining “religion” and “belief” inclusively, is illustrated by the continuing struggle to protect freedom of religion or belief in the context of international human rights.