Rights famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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We must surrender ourselves so utterly that we can never own ourselves again. We must hand over self and all its rights in an eternal covenant, and give God the absolute right to own us, control us and possess us forever.
-- A. B. Simpson -
It's a different way of looking at the world. Your life isn't about rights. It's about responsibilities."--Mr Bill Berkowitz
-- A. J. Jacobs -
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.
-- A. Philip Randolph -
True religion, like our founding principles, requires that the rights of the disbeliever be equally acknowledged with those of the believer.
-- A. Powell Davies -
I don't know if the unborn has rights, but I do know that being born again doesn't give you more rights.
-- A. Whitney Brown -
I don't know whether you have any rights before you're born. All I know is that being born again doesn't entitle you to twice as many.
-- A. Whitney Brown -
Perhaps worse still is what liberal societies might do to themselves in the face of this new and different threat [of terrorism]. They begin, by small but dangerous increments, to cease to be as liberal as they once were. They begin to restrict their own hard-won rights and freedoms as a protection against the crminial minority who attempt (and as we thus see, by forcing liberty to commit suidcide, succed in doing) to terrorise society.
-- A.C. Grayling -
The only possible basis for a sound morality is mutual tolerance and respect: tolerance of one another’s customs and opinions; respect for one another’s rights and feelings; awareness of one another’s needs.
-- A.J. Ayer -
I'm a vegetarian and very much active in regards to how I feel about animal rights and protecting animals and giving animals a voice. But at the same time, I appreciate and respect other people's decisions to eat meat. The only thing that I hope is that people are educated, that they're aware, that they're living a conscious lifestyle.
-- Abbie Cornish -
As to women, the Islamic faith has given women rights that are equal to or more than the rights given them in the Old Testament and the Bible.
-- Abdullah of Saudi Arabia -
It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.
-- Abe Fortas -
Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COULD LEARN WHAT I KNOW OF THE FIERCE HATRED OF THE PRIESTS OF ROME AGAINST OUR INSTITUTIONS, OUR SCHOOLS, OUR MOST SACRED RIGHTS, AND OUR SO DEARLY BOUGHT LIBERTIES, THEY WOULD DRIVE THEM OUT AS TRAITORS!
-- Abraham Lincoln -
I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
I’d rather be a straight ‘self-proclaimed homosexual’ than a racist, ignorant, hate-filled bigot in Rise Up Australia any day. This party wants to end multiculturalism and discriminate against anyone different. What this mob intends as a grievous insult, I take as a compliment. Long live equal rights.
-- Adam Bandt -
I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader.
-- Adam Lambert -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation of its day, and included women's rights as part of its reforms. Ironically, the section on women's rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens' rights into it, it would never pass. The bill passed anyway, though, much to the chagrin of a certain wiener from Virginia.
-- Adam Selzer -
The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.
-- Adolf Hitler -
We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Success on the front of women's rights will look like a world not only with obvious advances - where no girl is denied access to education, for instance - but also one with more subtle changes in how we regard gender and gender stereotypes.
-- Adora Svitak -
The electronic spectrum is the only natural resource in which there's no such thing as private property rights. You can't own a piece of the spectrum.
-- Adrian Cronauer -
Without amendments we would never even have had the Bill of Rights.
-- Adrian Cronauer -
The basic notion of justice, is that the rights of everybody are equals, in principle. In the rights of others, we have to respect our own rights. It is only in that condition that we can reasonnably require that it be respected by others.
-- African Spir -
Liberty is about our rights to question everything.
-- Ai Weiwei -
The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality, basic human rights, freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.
-- Ai Weiwei -
The modern infrastructures that exists in the world all contribute to the advancement of human rights and democracy.
-- Akbar Ganji -
I am against revolution and am proud of it. Democracy cannot be created through revolutions. The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it. In a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire). When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act,
-- Akbar Ganji -
Today, at Harvard, any student with the currently fashionable color of skin is given rights denied to students of the currently unfashionable color.
-- Al Capp -
The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers - one that would protect Americans' liberty at all times - both in war, and in peace.
-- Al Franken -
The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important 'cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.
-- Al Franken -
I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, 'Hey man, we don't go for that anymore.'
-- Al Gore -
Population growth is straining the Earth's resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights.
-- Al Gore -
I do not believe that defending traditional marriage between one man and one woman excludes anybody or usurps anybody's civil rights and denies anybody their civil rights.
-- Alan Autry -
I am opposed to special rights for gays just as I am opposed to special rights for heterosexuals or smokers. I can attest to the fact that sexual orientation is not immutable and I urge the city council to vote no on this amendment.
-- Alan Chambers -
I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.
-- Alan Dershowitz -
You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.
-- Alan Keyes -
Either you can subscribe to the American creed which says that God endowed us with our rights, or you can subscribe to the abortion creed which says that those rights are the consequences of our mother's will.
-- Alan Keyes -
The Declaration of Independence summarizes the civic principles of American life. It agrees with this biblical perspective when it affirms that we are all created equal and endowed by the Creator, God, with our unalienable rights.
-- Alan Keyes -
Preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women, and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own. Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country.
-- Alan Keyes -
In the great Declaration of our principles, it didn't say that all men are created equal 'if you so choose.' It said that all are created equal by the power and the will of God, and that we must respect their rights as we respect that will.
-- Alan Keyes -
The loss of love is the loss of all rights, even though one had them all.
-- Albert Camus -
The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
-- Albert Einstein -
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
-- Albert Gallatin -
The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
-- Albert J. Nock -
It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
If you wanted to put the world to rights, who should you begin with: yourself or others?
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
Bullies, oppressors and all men who do violence to the rights of others are guilty not only of their own crimes, but also of the corruption they bring into the hearts of their victims.
-- Alessandro Manzoni -
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
-- Alex Kozinski -
My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime usually do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed only for those exceptionally rare circumstances when all other rights have failed. A free people can only afford to make this mistake once.
-- Alex Kozinski -
For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.
-- Alex Kozinski -
Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights.
-- Alex Kozinski -
We feel that animals have the same rights as retarded human nchild because they are equal mentally in terms of dependence on others.
-- Alex Pacheco -
Painful as it may be to hear it, there's nothing special about the people of this country that sets them apart from the other people of the world. It is the Bill of Rights, and only the Bill of Rights, that keeps us from becoming the world's biggest banana republic. The moment we forget that, the American Dream is over.
-- Alexander Beresford Hope -
The protection of human rights to promote the dignity of the individual is too important a matter for symbolic gestures alone. It is only through the pursuit of practical and effective efforts to promote human rights that we show our real commitment to the welfare of individuals and society.
-- Alexander Downer -
The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter; as if the exercise of its rights, by either the executive or judiciary, were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity you must be respectable; even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
[If you understood the natural rights of mankind,] [y]ou would be convinced that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that, and cannot be wrested from any people without the most manifest violation of justice.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority .... Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty. . . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law...That portion of the sovereignty, to which each individual is entitled, can never be too highly prized. It is that for which we have fought and bled...
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Effective resistance to usurpers is possible only provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subject to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees, the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors but as their superiors.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
Photography has all the rights, and all the merits, necessary for us to turn towards it as the art of our time.
-- Alexander Rodchenko -
Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
A government is free in proportion to the rights it guarantees to the minority.
-- Alf Landon -
Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
-- Alfie Kohn -
What rights are those that dare not resist for them?
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson -
Material goods consist of useful material things, and of all rights to hold, or use, or derive benefits from material things, or to receive them at a future time.
-- Alfred Marshall -
Individual and national rights to wealth rest on the basis of civil and international law, or at least of custom that has the force of law.
-- Alfred Marshall -
Specific protection must be granted to human rights defenders and whistleblowers who have in some contexts been accused of being unpatriotic, whereas they perform, in reality, a democratic service to their countries and to the enjoyment of human rights of their compatriots.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
Transnational Corporations must be legally accountable for the negative human rights impacts of their activities.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
Respect for human rights requires transparent and accountable institutions and governance as well as the effective participation of all individuals and civil society, who are an essential part of realizing social and people-centred sustainable development.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
The mandate entails a generous synthesis of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The title requires the expert to be truly independent, keep an open mind, conduct his/her research objectively and without ideological prejudices, listen to all sides of an argument and seek the opinion of all stakeholders.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
Without peace and the rule of law, civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights cannot be enjoyed, when killing, maiming and mutual poisoning prevail.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
The abuse of the veto power has become so predictable that frequently resolutions are not even tabled because of the certainty of a veto against their adoption. Necessary discussion is thereby suppressed. Concerted action by the Security Council, the General Assembly and other United Nations agencies is necessary to prevent major human rights violations, stop ongoing breaches and provide remedies to victims.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
World peace is threatened not only by weapons of mass destruction but also by conventional weapons which have led to countless violations of human rights, including the rights to life and to physical integrity. A strong treaty can contribute greatly to international and regional peace, security and stability.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
One of the problems that we have in the human rights community is that special interests often forget the interests of other victims, and there's competition among victims expressions that are unnecessary.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
Democracy is not the end product, but the means to the end, which is the enjoyment of human rights by all.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
No country has a perfect report card. While some countries have strong points in specific areas, they may have serious lacunae in other areas. For instance, some countries have made enormous progress on civil and political rights, but lag in the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
The goal of #BDS is the full restoration of Palestinian rights, not an agreement to create an artificial mini-state in order to save Zionism
-- Ali Abunimah
