Human Rights Day Quotes

“Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man’s inhumanity to man.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mind
most of our colors are amazingly the same.”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

“In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers’ broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again

“It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“What can bombs know of the illuminated fields so golden with heaven in your heart’s sacred lands?”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again

“Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“Death wins nothing here,
gnawing wings that amputate––
then spread, lift up, fly.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“Before the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.”
― Aberjhani, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois

“History is a hermaphrodite with many distinguished lovers. We are neither mysteries nor strangers but the living breath of revelation made flesh by the unrestrained desires of a free and universal love. Universal me. Universal you.”
--from Past Present and Future are One”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

“Got just enough room to be a friend of yours. Oh I hope you got room to be a friend of mine.”
― Aberjhani, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player

“Journey through the Power of the Rainbow represents a condensed compendium of literary efforts from a life dedicated to transforming the themes of injustice, grief, and despair that we all encounter during some unavoidable point of our existence into a sustainable life-affirming poetics of passionate creativity, empowered spiritual vision, and inspired commitment.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“In an age of bombs
guzzling blood, skylarks merge peace
with thought and action.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“As life in general constituted much pain in the form of struggles against poverty, disease, ignorance, and emotional anguish, what more civilized way for people to alleviate the same than by giving themselves to one another as brothers and sisters in deed as well as in word? A society of people hoping to become politically superior needed first to become spiritually valid.”
― Author-Poet Aberjhani, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois

“The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“When you stand up for someone's right, and work for those who are suffering, for those who are deprived, for those who are in hunger, and in poor health and try to uplift the standard of living for all people across the planet, the Universal blessings come to you.”
― Amit Ray, Freedom and Responsibility: Living on the Edge

“Human rights start with the freedom of equal income and educational opportunity. The deep-rooted inequalities like gender, colour, race and religion discriminations can be uprooted only through equal income and educational opportunity for all.”
― Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

“The instinct to tell our children that they are better than someone else’s children, based on nothing more than the color of their skin, is now a fossilized aberration that serves no useful purpose.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“Whenever morons 'n their yes men ruin harmony, whenever accountability is deemed as misdemeanor, embracing affliction, from the dust 'n dirt of soil 'n street, you the Milkyway Messiah is to rise as the sentient shield.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervish Advaitam: Gospel of Sacred Feminines and Holy Fathers

“Of the many unanswered questions surrounding the right to religious freedom, one of the most pressing is if the parliamentary proceedings and constitutional guarantees have failed to protect religious diversity, then the price of freedom is beyond measure.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“After the dust of centuries has passed, we will be remembered not only for victories or defeats in battle or politics but also for our contribution to the human spirit.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“Enough contemplation of the government’s misdeeds: today, I thought to break my silence about how rogue prime ministers, incompetent cabinet ministers, corrupt bureaucrats, dishonest judges, and unkind military dictators bring me to an era of total breakdown.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“We are humans without human rights since every right belongs to those in power, whereas others can only read, hear, dream, and hope for that, but they cannot see and procure them practically.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Nevertheless, Pakistan is going through a systematic collapse of state institutions one after the other which has emanated from bad governance, corruption, and lack of discipline.”
― Qamar Rafiq