Spiritual Quote of the Day (Kwadjo Boaitey, on Being God’s Child and ‘Knowing the Rights of All People’)

“Knowing the rights of all people – the right to the blessings of the kingdom of heaven and to reflect all the attributes of God (love, strength, health, mercy, justice, joy, eloquence, intelligence, and freedom) – is to know who you are as God’s child. It makes you a better man or woman. It enables you to bless, to heal, to make a better world.”— Little Rock, Arkansas educator Kwadjo Boaitey, “A Higher Call for Civil Rights,” Christian Science Monitor Weekly, June 30, 2014

Or, as the title of closing hymn of the Mass I heard this morning urged: “Go Make a Difference.”

Quote of the Day (Sarah Margon, on the Damage Caused by the U.S. Retreat on Human Rights)

“Petition gathering by like-minded countries is less effective without the most powerful country on earth. State and local governments can only do so much to work around the federal government. And although Congress controls the power of the purse, it has far less influence on foreign policy than the executive branch. And all the while, the White House’s attacks on immigrants, health care, minority communities, and the justice system will continue to diminish American credibility on human rights overseas. Simply put, unless it changes course dramatically, the Trump administration—and the president himself—will remain one of the greatest threats to human rights in decades.”— Sarah Margon, Washington Director, Human Rights Watch, “Giving Up the High Ground—America’s Retreat on Human Rights,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2018

Quote of the Day (Albert Camus, on the ‘Job of Thinking People’)

“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” — French Nobel Literature laureate Albert Camus (1913-1960), “Neither Victims Nor Executioners” (1946)

Quote of the Day (Elie Wiesel, on the Proper Response to Human Suffering)

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”— Holocaust survivor, human-rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), Night, translated by Marion Wiesel (1955)

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King, on Why One Should ‘Make a Career of Humanity’)

“Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Address to Youth March for Integrated Schools,” April 18, 1959, Washington, DC

(This close-up of the face of Dr. King comes from his statue in the King Memorial, which I visited and photographed yesterday here in DC. Today’s quote was inscribed on one of the walls behind the statue of Dr. King.)

Quote of the Day (Andrei Sakharov, on Human Rights and Scientific Progress)

“International confidence, mutual understanding, disarmament, and international security are inconceivable without an open society with freedom of information, freedom of conscience, the right to publish, and the right to travel and choose the country in which one wishes to live. I am likewise convinced that freedom of conscience, together with the other civic rights, provides the basis for scientific progress and constitutes a guarantee that scientific advances will not be used to despoil mankind, providing the basis for economic and social progress, which in turn is a political guarantee for the possibility of an effective defense of social rights.”—Andrei Sakharov, “Peace, Progress, Human Rights” (Nobel Peace Prize Lecture), December 11, 1975

Andrei Sakharov, Soviet scientist turned dissident, was born on this date in 1921. Though dead for the last two decades, this towering figure continues to provide powerful witness, through the example of his life and work, to the cause of human rights worldwide.