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Rights Quotes

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Rights Quotes

“Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.”

Men Want Needs Humans Wells Reason Hands Desire Individual Energy Given Enjoy Rights Conditions Limits Absolutes Individuality Inclination Human Hands

Author:Wilhelm von Humboldt

“Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.”

Language Liberty Roles Democracy Rights Protect Absolutes Accomplish Compromise Reform Absolute Power

Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

Source: The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

“With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.”

Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims

“There is no such thing as absolute free speech; there are only absolute rights of private property. Speech is circumscribed by private property rights. You may deliver a disquisition in my virtual or actual living room only if I permit you to so do.”

Ifs May Rooms Rights Speech Absolutes Property Permit Free Speech Living Room Private Property Property Rights

Author:Ilana Mercer

“I know some teachers say that you shouldn't display the psychic powers and other powers referred to as the siddhas, but as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't really matter. There are no absolute rights or wrongs in spiritual practice”

Knows Matter Spiritual Practice Teacher Rights Buddhism Concerned Absolutes Display Psychics Rama Spiritual Practice

Author:Frederick Lenz

“People have the absolute right to preach and to think and to say whatever they believe, and at the same time those beliefs can't be used as the basis for denying other people their equal rights and their equal freedom.”

People Thinking Believe Used Belief Rights Equal Bases Absolutes Equal Rights

Author:Chris Christie

“Our role as artist is more controversial now because there are those, claiming the absolute authority of religion, who detest much of our work as much as they detest most of our politics. Instead of rationally debating subjects like abortion or gay rights, they condemn as immoral those who favor choice and tolerance. They disown their own dark side and magnify everyone else's until, at the extreme, doctors are murdered in the name of protecting life. I wonder, who is this God they invoke, who is so petty and mean? Is God really against gun control and food stamps for poor children?”

“When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.”

Law Rights Absolutes Contracts

Book:The Papers of John Marshall: Correspondence, papers, and selected judicial opinions, April 1807-December 1813

Source: The Papers of John Marshall: Correspondence, papers, and selected judicial opinions, April 1807-December 1813

“People are beginning to become disturbingly comfortable with a kind of official hypocrisy. Bizarrely, for instance, we've become numb to the idea that rights aren't absolute but are enjoyed on a kind of sliding scale.”

People Kind Ideas Rights Comfortable Absolutes Scales Instance Enjoyed Officials Hypocrisy Numb

Book:The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Source: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

“If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter of things -- to which the Stoic strictly adheres -- but in looking up to the spirit of things; in absolute contempt of all economic values and political splendor, and in courageous defence of the rights of independent freedom; then Christianity would be nothing but universal cynicism.”

“Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government.”

Source: A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of Virginia

“The origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter; for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent?”

Men Government Rights Security Absolutes Originals Limitation Titles Latter Rulers Consent Liable Compact

Book:The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc

Source: The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc

“Everyone has an equal and absolute right to sovereignty over his own body, his own property, and his own life, and to pursue his own happiness in any way that he chooses. No one has the authority to grant rights to anyone else, because human beings already possess all natural rights at birth. These rights include both personal and economic freedoms, and the only way they can be lost is if someone takes them away by force. The only right that an individual does not naturally possess is the right to violate someone else's liberty.”

Ifs Way Humans Doe Body Individual Lost Force Natural Human Beings Liberty Rights Economic Birth Equal Authority Absolutes Property Pursue Grants Sovereignty Economic Freedom Natural Rights

Author:Robert Ringer

“You talk about the Pro-Life movement being one of the great shames of our nation. I think, if you want number two, I think - I think it's that. I think it's absolute - it's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights.”

People Ifs Thinking Want Two Nations Numbers Cases Rights Movement Gay Deserve Absolutes Shame Pro Life Basic Rights Travesty

Author:Jon Stewart

“Mutual respect among everyone for one another and for one another's rights is an absolute prerequisite for peace.”

Rights Absolutes Mutual Prerequisites Mutual Respect

Author:Ryan Miller

“The kind of capitalism we are seeing today under this expansion of property into living resources is a whole, new, different phase of capitalism. It is totally inconsistent with democracy as well as with sustainability. What we have is capital working on a global scale, totally uprooted, with accountability nowhere, with responsibility nowhere, and with rights everywhere. This new capital, with absolute freedom and no accountability, is structurally anti-life, anti-freedom.”

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”