America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense… human rights invented America.
Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.
In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.
Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word ''human.''
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
Words like ''freedom,'' ''justice,'' ''democracy'' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.