#Natural Rights Quotes

“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”

“The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.”

“Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.”

“All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state”

“Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.”

“Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author”

“All... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law.”

“The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.”

“Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.”

“Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity, any part of it.”

“Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights.”

“By nature's law, every man has a right to seize and retake by force his own property taken from him by another, by force of fraud. Nor is this natural right among the first which is taken into the hands of regular government after it is instituted. It was long retained by our ancestors. It was a part of their common law, laid down in their books, recognized by all the authorities, and regulated as to circumstances of practice.”

“That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”

“There cannot be a stronger natural right than that of a man's making the best profit he can of the natural produce of his lands.”