Rights Quotes

“[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.”

“The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.”

“A right is worth fighting for only when it can be put into operation.”

“We didn't have another choice but to do what we did, if we wanted to be accepted, because we weren't counted as human beings.”

“So the question rises: How much liberty can you get away with? Well, you get no more liberty than you give!”

“We [Americans] have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.”

“The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.”

“We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.”

“The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.”

“Man ... feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.”

“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.”

“Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.”

“The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.”

“I hope I shall never see the daywhen the Force of Rightis deprived of the Right of Force.”

“We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.”

“Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men.”

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

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

“Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth.”

“Every diminution of the liberty of the press is followed by a diminution of civilization. Wherever we see the freedom of the press interfered with, there we see the nutrition of the human family interrupted.”

“Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.”

“Let it be signified to me through any channelthat the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, andin sixty days it will be accomplished....penned in the language of truth, and divested of those expressions of servility which would persuade his majesty that we are asking favors and not rights.”

“Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.”

“Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it.”

“A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.”