#Rights Quotes

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

“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”

“We must recognise that we have a great inheritance in our possession, which represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries; that there is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause. Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause?”

“We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.”

“No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.”

“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts”

“I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.”

“The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.”

“I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

“America is not a mere body of traders; it is a body of free men. Our greatness is built upon our freedom - is moral, not material. We have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.”

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

“An evident principleis the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.”

“There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.”

“I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.”

“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”

“Every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.”

“Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action.”

“I have received delegations of working men who, apparently speaking with the utmost sincerity, have declared that they would regard it as a genuine hardship if they were deprived of their beer, for example.”

“I have always claimed Americans didn't want a drink as bad as they wanted the right to take a drink if they did happen to want one.”

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

“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.”

“The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.”

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

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“[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.”