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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 866
AUTHOR: Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
QUOTATION: Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
ATTRIBUTION: ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, remarks at presentation of booklet on human rights, In Your Hands, to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, United Nations, New York, March 27, 1958.—United Nations typescript of statements at presentation (microfilm).

This quotation, lacking the final sentence, was used by Adlai E. Stevenson in 1963 on his Christmas card.
SUBJECTS: Human rights