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Rights Quotes

“I believe that God has endowed men with certain inalienable rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and that no legislature and no majority, however great, may morally limit or destroy these; that the sole function of government is to protect life, liberty, and property, and anything more than this is usurpation and oppression.”

“The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition - the divine right of kings. At issue was the fundamental question of whether men's rights were God-given or whether these rights were to be dispensed by governments to their subjects. This document proclaimed that all men have certain inalienable rights. In other words, these rights came from God.”

“The first right of every human being is the right of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our Constitution.”

“Americans' liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state and local government's are confiscating citizens' property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before.... American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose unless fundamental political changes occur.”

“The legal system we have and the rule of law are far more responsible for our traditional liberties than any system of one man one vote. Any country or Government which wants to proceed towards tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and undermine the law.”

“Unfortunately, the United States and a few other governments have used the war on terrorism as a way of violating human rights. I am referring to the case of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners. This violation of the rights of prisoners has been so unbelievable that the United Nations has reminded the United States repeatedly that the treatment of prisoners should take place according to the preestablished conventions of the United Nations.”

“Waiving the rights of conscience, not included in the surrender implied by the social state, & more or less invaded by all Religious establishments, the simple question to be decided, is whether a support of the best & purest religion, the Christian religion itself ought not, so far at least as pecuniary means are involved, to be provided for by the Government, rather than be left to the voluntary provisions of those who profess it.”

“Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

“In a government framed for durable liberty, not less regard must be paid to giving the magistrate a proper degree of authority, to make and execute the laws with rigour, than to guarding against encroachments upon the rights of the community. As too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy, and both eventually to the ruin of the people.”

“Madison understood that if you want to protect rights from government abuse, you would be wise not to give government the power in the first place that can be used to abuse rights. That is a lesson we have forgotten. As we have asked government to do more and more for us, we have forgotten that a government big enough to give us everything we want will be powerful enough to take everything we have.”

“So what's the difference between republican and democratic forms of government? John Adams captured the essence of the difference when he said, 'You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.' Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.”

“If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GAT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited.”

“The FBI wants Apple to write software code to help it break into the iPhone. Apple doesn't want to say this. Andrew Crocker, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, a digital civil rights group, says the government can't make you say what you don't believe. He looks to a Supreme Court case that began in New Hampshire.”

“We have to build movements in the face of trade retaliation on the basis of people's democratic rights, on the basis of an ancient heritage of collective innovation. We work from the grassroots all the way to the national government and the World Trade Organization. It basically means being very multidimensional in our campaigns. And that is where part of the fun is. It involves both resistance and creativity. It involves constructive action, while at the same time saying "no."”

“I find it extraordinary that I'm being told I can't trust you the voter to get a government in to protect workers rights and that we need Brussels to defend you, the euro is a broken project we are going to pay, no you are going to pay out of your taxes one bailout out of another and the European union does not protect your jobs.”

“The cases involving the question of whether U.S. courts should be open to claims of international human rights violations brought by foreign persons against foreign government officials. And the State Department on the one side has got a very consistent and powerful view that U.S. courts should be open to those claims because there needs to be a place in the world where they can be brought. And those human rights norms ought to be real and enforceable, and we ought to be a beacon to the world.”

“During that time period all of our tribes were suffering extremely from poverty and neglect. And the reason I say neglect is because the U.S. Government was neglecting its true responsibilities they agreed to in exchange for our land and resources. What I and others attempted to do, and in essence we did, was bring attention to our sovereign rights, the rights we had retained when the treaties were made.”

“United States Government needs to acknowledge and respect our sovereignty, treaties, traditional Native American values, and our human rights as a people, which under the law as written we deserve, and which should be protected.”