I find our modern emphasis on 'rights' somewhat overdone and misleading... It makes people forget that the other and more important side of rights is duty. And indeed the great historic codes of our human advance emphasised duties and not rights... The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and... the Sermon on the Mount... all are silent on rights, all lay stress on duties.

On the rights embodied in the United Nations Charter of which he drafted the Preamble, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts - Man of courage and vision, p. 144. ISBN 978-1-86842-390-3