If you read the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá with selflessness and care and
concentrate upon them, you will discover truths unknown to you before and will obtain an insight into the problems that have baffled the great thinkers of the world.

~Shoghi Effendi, "The Compilation of Compilations, vol II," p. 2

Each individual person comes into the world as a trust of the whole, and it is this feature of human existence that constitutes the real foundation of the social, economic and cultural rights that the United Nations Charter and its related documents articulate.  Justice and unity are reciprocal in their effect.  "The purpose of justice", Bahá'u'lláh wrote, "is the appearance of unity among men.  The ocean of divine wisdom surgeth within this exalted word, while the books of the world cannot contain its inner significance."

~ Baha'i International Community, February 1999
"Who is Writing the Future? Reflections on the Twentieth Century"

Sorrow, tragedy, illness, death, touch at some point every individual, millionaire or beggar.  If you can not feel deeply, be it joy or agony of soul, you are not much of a human being, for to feel is the very hallmark of living matter.  And if, when life is hard, or suddenly deals you a bitter blow, you can not stand in the fire and burn, eat your portion of pain like a man, enduring it rather than escaping it, you are not only a weakling, you are missing one of the the finest things life has to offer you -- spiritual discipline.

~ Hand of the Cause of God Ruhiyyih Rabbani, "Prescription for Living," p. 98

In developing countries, but, of course, not in these countries alone, women remain the beasts of burden. It is they who must bear the children, grow the food, care for the home, travel to the market, obtain the fuel, carry the water, and then serve their men. This hugely unjust expectation of the female population also denies them the right of participating at the decision-making level and so in promoting actively the cause of human rights in their locality, for they have neither the time nor the energy. What we must attempt is a conversion of this source of inequality into a spring of positive energy. One way of approaching this is to recognize the rootedness of women in the basic survival processes of society and to channel such experience into the development of rural, and urban, societies. This implies female participation at all levels of development, whether it be in the home, at work, in administration, or in leisure. Moreover, if the benefits of such knowledge are to be most effectively diffused throughout society, then the appropriate authorities would do well to consider giving first priority to the education of women and girls, not just as a priority over the education of men, but as a priority among the general concerns of their domestic policy.

~ Baha'i International Community, 9 Feb 1990, "Right to Development"
Statement to the 46th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights

In the human body, every cell, every organ, every nerve has its part to play. When all do so the body is healthy, vigorous, radiant, ready for very call made upon it. No cell, however humble, lives apart from the body, whether in serving it or receiving from it.  This is true of the body of mankind in which God has endowed each humble being with ability and talent, and is supremely true of the body of the Bahá'í World Community, for this body is already an organism, united in its aspirations, unified in its methods, seeking assistance and confirmation from the same Source, and illumined with the conscious knowledge of its unity...

~Universal House of Justice, September 1964, "Wellsprings of Guidance," p. 37