Rights Quotes

My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me.

We stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

The aim of justice is to give everyone his due.

Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of menours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser; and all better, and happier together.

I am ever unwilling that [peace] should be disturbed as long asthe rights and interests of the nations can be preserved. But whensoever hostile aggressions on theserequire a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we arejust friends and brave enemies.

Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.

When declaring your rights, don't forget your responsibilities.

Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.

I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living. . . . We seem not to perceive that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another. . . . The earth belongs always to the living generations.

Men in prison are "civilly dead" and have no claim to any say in policy.

Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.

Private property...is the creature of society and is subject to the calls of that society even to the last farthing.

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

It seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.

In Swaraj, based on ahimsa, people need not know their rights, but it is also necessary for them to know their duties.

A right delayed is a right denied.

The truest test of a democracy is in the ability of anyone to act as he likes, so long as he does not injure the life or property of anyone else.

Well I am always interested my people's right. But I will push myself to a revolution without arms.

[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

Begin with duties of a man and rights will follow as spring follows winter

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

For society as a whole, nothing comes as a "right" to which we are "entitled." Even bare subsistence has to be produced-and produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.

Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.

What exactly is your 'fair share' of what 'someone else' has worked for?

Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

Individual civil disobedience was everybody's inherent right, like the right of self-defence in normal life.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal services to the defence of it, and consequently that the Citizens of America (with a few legal and official exceptions) from 18 to 50 Years of Age should be borne on the Militia Rolls, provided with uniform Arms, and so far accustomed to the use of them, that the Total strength of the Country might be called forth at a Short Notice on any very interesting Emergency.

What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.

If someone is confronting our essential liberties, if someone is inflicting injuries and harm, by God I'll confront them!

The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.

No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature.

I would like to explain the meaning of compassion, which is often misunderstood. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the rights of the other: irrespective of whether another person is a close friend

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them, when they are invaded.

No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.

Justice renders to every one his due.

An actual right is something that governments need merely to secure, not to implement.

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter endowed with will...Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Why will our elections be equal? Because neither differences in regard to property (differences partly existing) nor differences of race and nationality will cause any privileges or disadvantages. Women will enjoy the right to elect and be elected equally with men. Our elections will be really equal.

Let's at least acknowledge who is working in America right now and what our needs are, as well as the moral question of somebody who's been here 20 years, paying taxes to which they probably do not receive a refund, and not committing any crimes, working hard, and supporting an industry. Shouldn't there be some middle ground here? Shouldn't there be a way for them to be welcome in this country?

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.

The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.

Our Constitution gives to bigotry no sanction.

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

But whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their re- establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

Freedom alone is not enough without light to read at night, without time or access to water to irrigate your farm, without the ability to catch fish to feed your family.

Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.

While we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free.

Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.

Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right.

I am a subject,And I challenge law. Attorneys are denied me,And therefore personally I lay my claimTo my inheritance of free descent.

Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap.