Quotes About Human Dignity

#1. Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man ... the highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature.

Agnes Smedley

#2. Any minority's right to be different must be respected, but the right of the majority must not be questioned. Without the values at the core of Christianity and other world religions, without moral norms that have been shaped over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity.

Vladimir Putin

#3. The strike and the boycott, they have cost us much. What they have not paid us in wages, better working conditions, and new contracts, they have paid us in self-respect and human dignity.

Cesar Chavez

#4. On issue after issue, the counterpoints to the conservative principle of the free market are the progressive principles of human dignity and the common good. We are interested in a market that serves human values, not humans who serve a market. Take

George Lakoff

#5. Liberty and choice are the essential components that constitute human dignity.

Khaled Abou El Fadl

#6. His Holiness brings a wealth of experience to this exalted office. The United Nations and the Holy See share a strong commitment to peace, social justice, human dignity, religious freedom and mutual respect among the world's religions.

Kofi Annan

#7. Human dignity is the same for all human beings: when I trample on the dignity of another, I am trampling on my own.

Pope Francis

#8. So valuable to heaven is the dignity of the human soul that every member of the human race has a guardian angel from the moment the person begins to be.

St. Jerome

#9. Joy is found when you focus your energy on improving human dignity, human capacity and human values.

Amit Ray

#10. I've always tried to avoid politics because most politicians that I know are quite dirty in terms of human dignity, ethics and morals.

Steven Seagal

#11. What should move us to action is human dignity: the inalienable dignity of the oppressed, but also the dignity of each of us. We lose dignity if we tolerate the intolerable.

Dominique De Menil

#12. The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race: that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#13. Those who don't understand any language other than the language of force and violence don't respect human dignity. They seek violence because they will be irrelevant without it. We should not go their way.

Shirin Ebadi

#14. If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

#15. If there is a thread that unites all of our work, whether it's in Iowa or whether it's in Maryland or whether it's among our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe that it's the thread of human dignity.

Martin O'Malley

#16. In the Bible poverty is a scandalous condition inimical to human dignity and therefore contrary to the will of God.

Gustavo Gutierrez

#17. I found myself immediately attracted to Pope John Paul II when, upon his election to the Papacy, his published speeches invariably called attention to the need for recognizing the dignity of the human being as a child of God.

Robert H. Schuller

#18. I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas

John F. Kennedy

#19. All people deserve to be treated with dignity and have their human rights respected, no matter who they are or whom they love.

Hillary Clinton

#20. Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.

Immanuel Kant

#21. I won't defile my blessings by imagining that I deserve them. Until every human receives the dignity I casually enjoy, I pray my heart aches with tension and my belly rumbles for injustice.

Jen Hatmaker

#22. Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.

Mikhail Bakunin

#23. Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being's suffering. Nothing. Not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we're going to survive with dignity.

Audrey Hepburn

#24. My husband would do anything for me ... ' It's degrading. No human being ought to have such power over another."
"It's a very real power, Harriet."
"Then ... we won't use it. If we disagree, we'll fight it out like gentlemen. We won't stand for matrimonial blackmail.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#25. Given the fact that we are in a capitalist society, we still do not want to overlook not only what a corporation produces and its profitability but also how it impacts the environment, touches human life and whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person.

Dean Smith

#26. American values are not just about America, but they speak to the human dignity, the God-given spark that resides in each and every person across the world.

Hillary Clinton

#27. It is, in fact, a great mistake to think we must suppress observations of human differences if we are to do justice to human dignity. The dignity of the person is not touched by such observations, for the dignity of human beings as persons is not an object of observation but of recognition.

Robert Spaemann

#28. Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#29. Respect for the dignity of the human person is the foundational principle of any just society. From a Catholic perspective, it also forms the foundation of all of our Church's social teachings.

Salvatore J. Cordileone

#30. So what we're talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we're facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

Bono

#31. For the people of Israel and America are historic partners in the global quest for human dignity and freedom. We will always remain at each other's side.

Ronald Reagan

#32. The world has lost a visionary leader, a courageous voice for justice, and a clear moral compass. By showing us that the path to freedom and human dignity lies in love, wisdom and compassion for one another, Nelson Mandela stands as an inspiration to us all.

Kofi Annan

#33. What is at stake is human dignity. If a man is not accorded respect he cannot respect himself and if he does not respect himself, he cannot demand it.

Cesar Chavez

#34. But all this business about kings and lords, it's against basic human dignity. We're all born equal. It makes me sick.'
'Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick,' said Nobby.
'It's Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby.

Terry Pratchett

#35. Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

Herbert Hoover

#36. The rapprochement of peoples is only possible when differences of culture and outlook are respected and appreciated rather than feared and condemned, when the common bond of human dignity is recognized as the essential bond for a peaceful world.

J. William Fulbright

#37. He United States is subject to the scrutiny of a candid world ... what the United States does, for good or for ill, continues to be watched by the international community, in particular by organizations concerned with the advancement of the rule of law and respect for human dignity.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#38. As more men become more educated and women get educated, the value system has to be more enhanced and the respect for human dignity and human life is made better.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

#39. The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity.

George Orwell

#40. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#41. If our free society is to endure, and I know it will, those who govern must recognize that the Framers of the Constitution limited their power in order to preserve human dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.

William J. Brennan

#42. All those who write either explicitly or by insinuation against the dignity, freedom, and immortality of the human soul, may so far forth be justly said to unhinge the principles of morality, and destroy the means of making men reasonably virtuous.

George Berkeley

#43. Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons.

Helen Prejean

#44. Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right.

Joseph Bernardin

#45. Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination. Christ is with you: be not afraid!

Pope John Paul II

#46. One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.

Wendell Berry

#47. Human Dignity has five characteristics : A playful curiosity,a capacity for dreams, a sense of humor to achieve and correct those dreams, a certain flexibility and spontaenity of behavior, a capacity to fight for and save those dreams !

Abha Maryada Banerjee

#48. It's a strange thing that every human being has a sort of dignity or wholeness in him, and out of that develops relationships to other human beings, tensions, misunderstandings, tenderness, coming in contact, touching and being touched, the cutting off of a contact and what happens then.

Ingmar Bergman

#49. Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#50. I had rather that the human race, having a certain quality in their lives, should continue for only a few centuries than that, losing freedom, friendship, dignity, and mercy, and learning to be quite content without them, they should continue for millions of millennia.

C.S. Lewis

#51. Migration is an expression of the human aspiration for dignity, safety and a better future. It is part of the social fabric, part of our very make-up as a human family

Ban Ki-moon

#52. If we're told that human ain't the highest among creatures,
then it'd be difficult to raise human dignity into current level.

Toba Beta

#53. Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.

Richard Wagner

#54. The deepness of human love and dignity will define the tolerance of humanity.

Debasish Mridha

#55. Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly forsee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.

George Washington

#56. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the result of indoor life.

Oscar Wilde

#57. From deep in the slave hut is somebody calling over 150 years to all of our experiences and all of our ideas on human respect, and all of our ideas on dignity. And I felt like that's just incredibly powerful.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

#58. Stalin has stolen more than lands. Hannelore, he has stolen human dignity. I see it in their forlorn eyes and broken posture. It's all the fault of the Communists.

Ruta Sepetys

#59. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.

John Charles Polanyi

#60. The real tragedy is that we're all human beings, and human beings have a sense of dignity. Any domination by one human over another leads to a loss of some part of his dignity. Is one's dignity that big it can be crumbled away like that?

Yusuf Idris

#61. He and his allies declared that every human being was equal in God's sight and made in the image of God, and must therefore be treated with equal dignity.

Eric Metaxas

#62. I want to focus on the importance of supporting marriage. I always speak about the need to respect everyone's human dignity - regardless of their sexual orientation. I think strengthening marriage is something that benefits everyone.

Salvatore J. Cordileone

#63. I define sustainable history as a durable progressive trajectory in which the quality of life on this planet or other planets is premised on the guarantee of human dignity for all at all times and under all circumstances.

Nayef Al-Rodhan

#64. You politicians make me sick with your heroics!
How to die with valor. How to die with dignity.

When you should be learning: how to live like a human being.

Nathan Toulane

#65. Hungry not only for bread - but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing - but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a home of bricks - but homeless because of rejection.

Mother Teresa

#66. Every single human being is created in the image of God; created for dignity, created for the Father's love, created for kindness, created for mercy.

Heidi Baker

#67. What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.

Martha Gellhorn

#68. Each of us has a mission ... each of us is called to change the world, to work for a culture of life, a culture forged by love and respect for the dignity of each human person.

Pope Benedict XVI

#69. We must continue to prove to the world that we can provide a rising standard of living for all men without loss of civil rights or human dignity to any man.

Robert Kennedy

#70. Own it. Just take it and say, 'Yes I will be great, I am going to be great.' Great doesn't mean being a movie star, great doesn't mean having millions of dollars. Great means being able to be confident, strong, and a solid human being that has dignity and integrity. That is great.

Rosie Perez

#71. This is a generation that is really detached from the core, human values that lead to dignity.

Shmuley Boteach

#72. [Jehovah is] certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty.

Mikhail Bakunin

#73. The protection of human rights to promote the dignity of the individual is too important a matter for symbolic gestures alone. It is only through the pursuit of practical and effective efforts to promote human rights that we show our real commitment to the welfare of individuals and society.

Alexander Downer

#74. On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil leared a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.

Laura Hillenbrand

#75. There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to people of white skin ... The more I feel like an American, the more the situation pains me.

Albert Einstein

#76. Morality and freedom are as certainly the only bases of the happiness and dignity of the human race as the system of Galileo is the true theory of the celestial motions.

Germaine De Stael

#77. Democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as the only road to sustained economic development and social justice.

Kim Dae-jung

#78. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.

Henry David Thoreau

#79. I think that whether someone is a Christian or not, the idea that a human life has dignity and intrinsic worth should be clear enough.

Mike Huckabee

#80. Frankl discovered that a human being's fundamental dignity lies in his capacity to choose his response to any situation - his response-ability.

Fred Kofman

#81. By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whither we understand it as created or uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind.

Leo Strauss

#82. I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

#83. Many aspects of the human condition are beautiful and many others are vile. Betrayal and personal agony represent a maddening part of being human. A person can maintain personal dignity by exercising restraint, remaining true to their conscience, and preserving under difficult conditions.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#84. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.

Laura Hillenbrand

#85. It was time for me to make my stand; to display my integrity and dignity as a human worthful of respect. It was time for me to aggress the predatory lions and destroy them once and for all.

Yanan Melo

#86. Is human dignity and human life so cheap that the rights protecting it can be traded away to appease the appetite for intimidation and prejudice of a vicious and self-centered group - for whatever reason, power, politics, nationalism, or unity?

Christina Engela

#87. Every economic ... acti on must set about providing each inhabitant of the planet with the minimum wherewithal to live in dignity and freedom, with the possibility of supporting a family, educating children, praising God and developing one's own human potential.

Pope Francis

#88. What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#89. No doubt Western modernity has its limitations and discontents. Still, it is far better than the known alternatives - not only, or even primarily, because of its advanced technology but because of its fundamental commitment to freedom, reason, and human dignity.

Rodney Stark

#90. Last year, [Pope Francis] was asked about his secret to happiness. He said slow down. Take time off. Live and let live. Don't proselytize. Work for peace. Work at a job that offers basic human dignity. Don't hold on to negative feelings. Move calmly through life. Enjoy art, books and playfulness.

Timothy Egan

#91. Human rights transcend local or ethnocentric values, conferring equal dignity and value on all humanity regardless of sex, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. It is in the West that human rights are most respected.

Ibn Warraq

#92. I will never tire of repeating this: what the poor need the most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being.

Mother Teresa

#93. The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this ...

William Wordsworth

#94. Yoga exercises are the best connecting tools for unity, human dignity, health, equality, global peace and compassion.

Amit Ray

#95. In other times it may have been the business of Christianity to champion the equality of all men; its business today will be to defend passionately human dignity and reserve.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#96. No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.

Sarah Addison Allen

#97. A building is a human being's space and the background for his dignity and its exterior should reflect its contents and function

Gottfried Bohm

#98. Everything on earth is beautiful, everything
except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

Anton Chekhov

#99. Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

James Thurber

#100. May no one use religion as a pretext for actions against human dignity and against the fundamental rights of every man and woman.

Pope Francis