Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.

Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.

The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly.

The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience.

The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science.

Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.

Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers.

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

The respect for human rights, essential if we are to use technology wisely, is not something alien that must be grafted onto science. On the contrary, it is integral to science, as also to scholarship in general.

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality.

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.

Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

Under this scientific and moral pressure, the Canadian government conceded publicly that the use of these weapons in Vietnam was, in their view, a contravention of the Geneva Protocol.

If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others' rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them.

What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims, a commitment to a new social contract, binding on all the Governments of the world.

Young people ask me if this country is serious about science. They aren't thinking about the passport that they will hold, but the country that they must rely on for support and encouragement.

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves.

Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science.

A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the civil society of thousands of supra-national NGOs.

Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.

In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality ethnicity class and color.

Idealism is the highest form of reason.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

To me, a feminist belongs in the same category as a humanist or an advocate for human rights. I don't see why someone who's a feminist should be thought of differently.

There are two things that I put my focus on. One is the fight against AIDS and finding a cure. The other is human rights.

I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan.

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.

The issue of human rights is one of the most fundamental human issues and also one of the most sensitive and controversial.

Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.

Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific.

It may be an extreme example brought about by abnormal circumstances - but the criteria of human rights kick in, surely, precisely when the conditions are extreme and the situation is abnormal.

The United Nations has a critical role to play in promoting stability, security, democracy, human rights, and economic development. The UN is as relevant today as at any time in its history, but it needs reform.

Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

The idea of human rights as a fundamental principle can be seen to underlie throughout Islamic teachings.

The UN declaration on human rights must always be first in line before religion or other cultural habits, in case of any conflict between them.

All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights.