Home / Topics / Rights Quotes

Rights Quotes

Browse 5529 quotes about Rights.

Rights Quotes

“People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.”

People Ifs Looks Rights Exercise Muscles

Author:Antonin Scalia

“Contrary to popular opinion, the Constitution was not - and is not - a grant of rights to the citizenry. Instead, the Constitution is a "barbed-wire entanglement" designed to interfere with, restrict, and impede government officials in the exercise of political power.”

“Never be silent! Make your opinions known, and do not fear retribution for speaking your mind! The only ones who will aggressively try to silence you are the ones who do not respect the liberties and rights of the individual. Those people deserve our contempt, and when you draw them out of the shadows by exercising your civil right to freedom of speech, they will expose themselves for what they truly are.”

People Trying Mind Politics Individual Silence Known Liberty Opinion Rights Exercise Speech Draws Shadow Deserve Silent Contempt Freedom Of Speech Retribution Do Not Fear

Author:Derek R. Audette

“May it not be asked of every intelligent friend to the liberties of his country, whether the power exercised in such an act as this ought not to produce great and universal alarm? Whether a rigid execution of such an act, in time past, would not have repressed that information and communication among the people which is indispensable to the just exercise of their electoral rights? And whether such an act, if made perpetual, and enforced with rigor, would not, in time to come, either destroy our free system of government, or prepare a convulsion that might prove equally fatal to it?”

Source: The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates's Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution

“When each citizen submits himself to the authority of law he does not thereby decrease his independence or freedom, but rather increases it. By recognizing that he is a part of a larger body which is banded together for a common purpose, he becomes more than an individual, he rises to a new dignity of citizenship. Instead of finding himself restricted and confined by rendering obedience to public law, he finds himself protected and defended and in the exercise of increased and increasing rights.”

“Do I have a problem with Larry Ellison buying Sun? No, that's part of the capitalist system. As soon as we go public we're for sale, that's part of the deal. And do I have a problem with him exercising his intellectual property rights? No, I don't have a problem with that. Would it be how we necessarily ran and operated? Obviously not.”

Problem Deals Sun Rights Exercise Intellectual Property Ran Buying Capitalist Property Rights Larry Intellectual Property

Author:Scott McNealy

“There is a mixture of evil in everything we do; indulgence encourages us to encroach, while we Crabbe exercise the rights of children, we become childish.”

Children Evil Rights Exercise Mixtures Indulgence

Author:William Cowper

“The only ‘realistic’ prospect is to ground a new political universality by opting for the impossible, fully assuming the place of the exception, with no taboos, no a priori norms (‘human rights,’ ‘democracy’), respect for which would prevent us from ‘resignifying’ terror, the ruthless exercise of power, the spirit of sacrifice … if this radical choice is decried by some bleeding-heart liberals as Linksfaschismus, so be it!”

“Norms appearing in the form of law entitle actors to exercise their rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which of these laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individual rights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually compatible.”

Persons Shows Form Law Actors Individual Liberty Principles Rights Exercise Equal Determine Discourse Norm Appearing Compatible Individual Rights

Author:Jurgen Habermas

“Striking a balance in favor of individual rights has always been the right decision for us and that it remains so even when technology gives us new ways to exercise those rights. Individual liberty has never weakened us; freedom of speech, enhanced by the Net, will only make us stronger.”

Way Giving Individual Decision Liberty Technology Rights Balance Exercise Speech Stronger Remains Favors Freedom Of Speech New Ways Right Decision Individual Liberty Individual Rights

Book:Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age

Source: Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age

“A word says more than a thousand images. Exercises for the visually inclined: illustrate "appreciation", "humor", "software", "education", "inalienable rights", "elegance", "fact".”

Facts Rights Exercise Thousand Appreciation Software Elegance Inalienable Rights

Author:Erik Naggum

“The safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.”

Thinking Men Way Should Matter States Action Justice Rights Exercise Sacred Lays Charity Every Man Likes Rulers Secular

Author:Baruch Spinoza

“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.”

Source: Social Justice and the City

“The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.”

Persons Has Beens Self Religion Opportunity Church Known Taken Rights Industry Exercise Judgment Conscience Fruit Organized Self Respect Robbery

Book:Woman, church and state: a historical account of the status of woman through the Christian ages, with reminiscences of the matriarchate

Source: Woman, church and state: a historical account of the status of woman through the Christian ages, with reminiscences of the matriarchate

“I grew up in the military. I've lived that life. I know that our soldiers are out there fighting for our right to vote, and they're out there fighting for other countries' rights to vote... Guys have been dying for it, and we have to go out and exercise it.”

Knows Has Beens Country Guy Fighting Rights Dying Military Grew Exercise Grew Up Vote Soldier Other Countries Right To Vote

Author:Robert Griffin III

“Democracy is liberty - a liberty which does not infringe on the liberty nor encroach on the rights of others; a liberty which maintains strict discipline, and makes law its guarantee and the basis of its exercise. This alone is true liberty; this alone can produce true democracy.”

Doe Law Liberty Democracy Rights Produce Discipline Exercise Bases Guarantees Strict True Democracy

Author:Chiang Kai-shek

“It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

Government Form Certain Individual Natural Rights Exercise Protect Tyranny Operations Forms Of Government Guarded Natural Rights

Book:Thomas Jefferson: selections from his writings edited, with an introduction

Source: Thomas Jefferson: selections from his writings edited, with an introduction

“This independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights ... [and] is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, that it has got a great contribution to make to the development of the proletariat in the United States, and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism.”

“... rights are liable to be perverted to wrongs when we are incapable of rightly exercising them.”

Rights Exercise Incapable Liable

Book:Godey's Magazine

Source: Godey's Magazine

“A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends... Protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies.”

“Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.”

Men Natural Liberty Rights Exercise Limits Members Enjoyment Natural Rights

Author:Marquis de Lafayette

“Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen. It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights. The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching, of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers, but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.”

People Mean Rights Crime Duty Ought Citizens Exercise Protect Constitution Victim Sacred Majority Congress Population Punishment Sole Hideous Prevention Sufferers Lynching

Author:Calvin Coolidge

“Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of "environmental refugees", people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it - and often their possessions as well - in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and development.”

Source: The Garden of God

“Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.”

Men Body Government Political Politics Rights Duty Exercise Trade

Book:Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution

Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution

“The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.”

Body Would Be Law Rights Exercise Favors Tyranny Civil Rights Power To Change

Author:Voltaire

“Obama wanted to offer his support to birth control activist Sandra Fluke. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy.”

“A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.”

People Giving Should Ends Law Given Interest Views Rights Exercise Advantage Corporations Legislation Public Interest

Author:William Jennings Bryan

“To the security of a free Constitution it [knowledge] contributes in various ways: by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights, to discern and provide against invasions of them, to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority, between burdens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society.”

People Knows Way Values Rights Teaching Security Exercise Authority Constitution Various Burden Oppression Inevitable Invasion Convenience Disregard Proceeding

Author:George Washington

“No system of criminal justice can, or should, survive if it comes to depend for its continued effectiveness on the citizens' abdication through unawareness of their constitutional rights. No system worth preserving should have to fear that if an accused is permitted to consult with a lawyer, he will become aware of, and exercise, these rights.”

Ifs Should Justice Rights Depends Citizens Exercise Should Have Criminals Lawyer Accused Effectiveness Criminal Justice Constitutional Rights Unawareness Abdication

Author:Arthur Goldberg

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

Source: The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799

“The right to express one's views, practice one's faith, peacefully assemble with others to pursue political or social change - these are all rights to which all human beings are entitled, whether they choose to exercise them in a city square or an Internet chat room. And just as we have worked together since the last century to secure these rights in the material world, we must work together in this century to secure them in cyberspace.”

“You are further to declare that we hold sacred the rights of conscience, and may promise to the whole people, solemnly in our name, the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion. And...that all civil rights and the right to hold office were to be extended to persons of any Christian denomination.”

People May Persons Whole Christian Names Rights Exercise Promise Office Conscience Sacred Civil Rights Denominations Christian Denominations

Author:Roger Sherman

“True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.”

People Humans Mean Persons Doe Natural Rights Exercise Constitution Human Rights Diminish

Book:American Contempt for Liberty

Source: American Contempt for Liberty

“From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty.”

Men Firsts Moments Rights Duty Ought Birth Exercise Deserve Instant Citizenship Moments Of Life

Book:The social contract: and, Discourses

Source: The social contract: and, Discourses

“Any new gun control is simply gonna infringe on the law-abiding ability to exercise constitutional rights. There's not a single law that could be written, that has been written, that could be passed that would stop Omar Mateen from getting a gun and shooting people up.”

People Has Beens Law Ability Rights Written Exercise Gun Shooting Gun Control Abiding Constitutional Rights Omar

Author:Rush Limbaugh