First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"We have seen tremendous success and return on investment over the last three years and look forward to doing much more together. We are also glad to be part of shaping up Africa’s basketball growth story, not only through hosting The BAL games, but also implementing youth development and social impact programs.”"
"Republicans were not wearing masks, and we were so many of us thinking, I’m out of here’. I’d rather be able to run from rioters and fight with them [than] from a virus that may be out in this room that I can’t see and don’t know how to fight"
"This was devastating, and the world watched us, and the world is still watching us, to see what we will do this day, and will know what we did this day, 100 years from now. Those are the immediate consequences and our actions will reverberate as to what are the future consequences."
"I’d rather be able to run from rioters and fight with them [than] from a virus that may be out in this room that I can’t see and don’t know how to fight"
"Republicans do not care about everyday Americans lives. The privileges they fight for are just for them"
"I’ll briefly say that defense counsels put a lot of videos out in their defense, playing clip after clip of Black women talking about fighting for a cause or an issue or a policy. It’s not lost on me that so many of them were people of color and women. Black women. Black women like myself who are sick and tired of being sick and tired for our children, your children"
"There are long-standing consequences. Decisions like this that will define who we are as a people. Who America is"
"But I do believe, even though we lost that case, that we have shown who Donald Trump is. We've shown the enemy that was among us, that was attempting to lead us, that was using us for his own greed and power, and that he will not have the same power that he had, should he ever attempt to run again"
"“The BAL has proven to be a great unifier, and we remain committed to showcasing the best Rwanda has to offer in terms of tourism, investment opportunities, talent development, Made in Rwanda products and much more to the world. With the BAL and other major events, Rwanda is the home for sport in Africa,”"
"All my twenty years experience of defense, freedom and human rights shows me that common people have a much greater impact than they can even imagine. And massive mobilisation of the common people can change the world history quicker than UN intervention."
"There are people who will fight for you, who will fight for your rights, who will never leave you alone. And this understanding provides a coverage to continue the fight. And let my lessons learn from this story is that in many part of the world, human rights defenders, they’re not working in human rights field. They’re fighting for human rights. And sometimes because of the size of challenges this fight, it seems that they have no sense. But we have to continue our fight honestly, and result will unexpectedly be achieved."
"This award [Nobel Peace Prize] have two dimensions. The first dimension is connecting with award to not only to Ukrainian human rights organisation, Center for Civil Liberties, but to the whole Ukrainian people who are fighting for freedom in all senses. And second dimension is award for human rights defenders who, regardless of their authoritarian regimes, tries to build horizontal ties between each other in order to protect freedom and human rights in our part of the world where Russia try to occupy new territories."
"Like sometimes I feel myself that we are documenting pain, which burned us out, but parallel, I see and feel the huge wave of solidarity among the people in Ukraine and abroad. And ordinary people start to do unordinary things. And this energy can change a lot."
"First of all, I know Ukraine’s history. We have been fighting for freedom for hundreds of years, and we will never give up. Second, I know the Ukrainian people. Putin underestimated us, and so did the West."
"This story is about resistance to common evil, about the fact that freedom has no borders, and the values ​​of human rights are universal. That human rights defenders build invisible horizontal connections in their societies to assert freedom and protect people in our part of the world, in which a monster is once again trying to rule. And who will lose sooner or later. And then peace will come. In no way should this award sound like an old narrative about fraternal nations. This story is about something else. This story is about the motto that I heard from my teacher, dissident and philosopher Yevhen Sverstyuk – “For our freedom and yours”"
"We live in very dramatic times, and political leaders of the world have to take historical responsibility because for decades, I’ve seen that political leaders behave like they believe the problems we face will vanish. But the truth is that these problems will not vanish. They have to take responsibility and to solve these problems for the next generation and not think only about the electoral period or the future of their own parties."
"We live in a very interconnected workld and only spreading freedom can make our world safer. And if political leaders will not take this historical responsibility, people can take this historical responsibility. All of my experience as a human rights defender has showed me that ordinary people have much greater impact than they can even imagine. And massive mobilization of ordinary people around the world can change the world’s history much more quickly than any UN intervention."
"Everything the UN stands for is at stake in Ukraine. If Putin is allowed to succeed, a new world will be born, in which larger states will once again be able to invade their neighbors with impunity. A brief period in human history, when the settled sovereign will of the people served as the basis for government, will end. Neo-imperial revisionist powers will create “spheres of influence” using economic pressure, political capture, disinformation, and military coercion to turn smaller neighbors into vassals. A world that is more open, connected, and safer will give way to one that is more closed, fragmented, and violent."
"The UN and its member-states should conduct international peace and security reform to create guarantees for all countries and their citizens, regardless of their participation or non-participation in military blocs or military capacity. Russia should be excluded from the UN Security Council for systematic violations of the UN charter."
"I don’t know what is in store for me or my family or my colleagues or my friends. But I know for sure that Ukraine will resist because we are fighting for our country, for our dignity, for our people, for our values. Russia tried to return us to the past which does not exist at all. We will never be a part of a restored Soviet Union. Putin will lose sooner or later."
"Women are currently represented in all areas of the country’s defence. Women serve in the Ukrainian army. Women have joined territorial defence units. Women take important political decisions. Women provide medical care. Women document Russian war crimes. You can see a significant number of women in every field of the social resistance to this invasion. At least in times of war, we suddenly seem to have gender equality in Ukraine. Women are currently at the forefront of the battle, equal to men."
"I hope that we will be able to overcome the rage, because sooner or later the war will finish, and we will have to continue building a civilized world. Maybe, in such a crisis, you go beyond some borders like nationality or region, because we are humans. We see ourselves now like people who are fighting for freedom, for human values. For us it doesn’t matter if you are Ukrainians or not. We closely cooperate with Russian human-rights defenders, with Belarusian human-rights defenders. We understand their willingness to help is because we are all human."
"I see from the general mood in the country that Ukrainians share the dream to rebuild our country and our destroyed cities together. They are committed to the successful democratic transformation of our country after the war. This dream encourages all of us to continue our struggle."
"We live in a very interconnected world. … We can’t build fences and close our eyes to real problems of human rights in our world."
"The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to all people in Ukraine who are currently fighting for freedom in all its senses. For the freedom to be a free and independent state. For the freedom to develop the Ukrainian language and culture. For the freedom to have one’s own democratic choice and to build a country in which the rights of every person are protected, the government is accountable, the courts are independent, and the police do not beat peaceful student demonstrations."
"It’s very dangerous to live in the world where your security depends not on the rule of law but on whether your country is a part of a military bloc. That’s a dangerous line of development for humankind."
""Time to take responsibility: Speech by Oleksandra Matviychuk at Nobel Peace Prize awarding ceremony", UkrInform, 10 December 2022"
"Talking of the so-called Russian mass media, it has been obvious to me over these years that it is part of Russia’s military and industrial complex. They work exclusively for military purposes, they incite hatred, they program people to kill, they create an image of the enemy."
"So, in this war, we are fighting for freedom in all senses: the freedom to be an independent state, not a colony of Russia; the freedom to be Ukrainians, to have our own language and culture, as other nations of the world do; the freedom to have a democratic choice — a chance to build a country where the judiciary is independent, human rights are protected, the government is accountable, and the police serve the people."
"The problem of the Russian nation is that Russians have this imperialistic code, as a driver of their existence. I wish Russians could overcome this side of their nature. It’s a necessity, if Russians are to be happy and successful."
"My first language was Russian. I switched to the Ukrainian language in school when I started to learn Ukrainian history and Ukrainian literature. I suddenly understood that my parents spoke Russian not because it was their choice but because they had been forced into it."
"Justice is costly, but it is also priceless."
"We can’t end the war on our own, but nothing will change without the efforts of each individual. We will pay a high price to finally break away from the Russian civilizational space with its culture, where there is no gender equality, with its dominant violence. We need to prepare for a long marathon that we will win."
"We call on the international community to become their voice and join us in seeking their release. As well as the release of all political prisoners who fought against the authoritarian regimes in Russia and Belarus."
"The spirit and determination of the Ukrainian people and President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy continue to inspire us all. Ukraine’s armed forces are driven, disciplined, and better-trained - and they are winning"
"I've continually said that my top priority is to make sure that all members of our armed forces are protected and respected when they put on a uniform in service of this country"
"I definitely take note of that changing global strategic environment where we have aggressors trying to make their mark against the allied nations, and what we need to continue to do, and will continue to do, is to be unified"
"There is a common thread to many of the heart-wrenching stories the Advisory Panel heard. At their core are the lost – but potentially powerful – contributions of the defense team who leave the organization because the price they would have to pay to persevere in the organization would be unbearable"
"I believe fundamentally in the importance of having women at the decision-making table in many capacities, in every institution"
"In this new world, Canada’s geographic position no longer provides the same protection that it once did. And in this new world, the security environment facing Canada is less secure, less predictable and more chaotic"
"The current policy will remain in place and we will continue to look at this emerging threat environment – what do we need to continue to do from a defense perspective in light of changing global circumstances"
"Threats are evolving quickly, from hypersonics to cyber attacks to the re-emergence of great power competition. In other words, the world we live in today differs from the threat assessments that underpinned Strong, Secure, Engaged in 2017"
"Canada condemns these actions and I personally am disgusted by them as they are reprehensible and a completely unwarranted and illegal intrusion into territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine."
""Canada “be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.”"
"After Katrina, trying to get back to the city was awful for Black people and we still haven’t fully recovered."
"Any climate bill has to deal with both repairing EJ communities and reducing climate change. The fact of the matter is that they go hand in hand, because one of the reasons that we are the way we are is because of what we’ve done to communities of color across this country — putting fossil fuel industry facilities in our communities, not caring about our health or our lives, that’s why we’re here. We can’t move forward without addressing that."
"it seems difficult to talk about putting in place a project that deals with racial discrimination when you can’t use race in evaluating it. It’s really insane."
"I don’t think we should talk about reducing greenhouse gases and saving the planet without environmental justice being shoulder to shoulder with that."
"Communities have not been able to recover, to go back home. And gentrification is happening at warp speed in areas where climate change and flooding have caused the displacement of communities. This is a huge problem. Race is at the center of it in terms of fairness. And we have to find a way to make certain that we make up for the harm that’s been done and put things in place so that harm does not continue for racial minorities in this country."
"My mother used to say a man’s money goes where his heart is, so if that’s the case, the amount of money going to CEQ to support environmental justice [EJ] does not show where their heart is. I believe the heart is there, but the money has to follow."