When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.
Interpretation
Ignoring human dignity leads to the neglect of human rights.
This quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton emphasizes the fundamental connection between human dignity and human rights. It suggests that when individuals or societies fail to recognize and respect the inherent worth of people, they inevitably start to overlook and violate the rights that safeguard that dignity, leading to a dangerous cycle that undermines the fabric of a just society.
In practice
During a human rights conference, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of respecting human dignity.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
The Work always leaves you with less of a story. _x000D_ Who would you be without your story? _x000D_ You never know until you inquire. _x000D_ There is no story that is you or that leads to you. _x000D_ Every story leads away from you. _x000D_ Turn it around; undo it. _x000D_ You are what exists before all stories. _x000D_ You are what remains when the story is understood.
To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that floats; Rice Krispies the breakfast cereal that goes snap-crackle-pop; Philip Roth the Jew who masturbates with a piece of liver.
Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
At this point in history when all things which concern man and the structure and elements of history itself are suddenly revealed to us in a new light, it behooves us in our scientific thinking to become masters of the situation, for it is not inconceivable that sooner than we suspect, as has often been the case before in history, this vision may disappear, the opportunity may be lost, and the world will once again present a static, uniform, and inflexible countenance.
Spiritual seeking means knowing this negative part: that desiring is the root cause of frustration. To desire is to create, of one`s own accord, a shell. Desiring is the world. To be worldly is to desire and to go on desiring, never becoming aware that each desire comes to nothing but frustration. Once you become aware of this, then you do not desire, or your only desire is to know what is.
Indeed, there is no such thing as an altogether ugly woman β or altogether beautiful.
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