Quotes About Rights

Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights.

If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?

We indeed did and do own our own minds and bodies, and anything from church or state that limits that is inappropriate and inconsistent with the ... society that America is supposed to be.

Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

Democracy cannot be forced upon a society, neither is it a gift that can be held forever. It has to be struggled hard for and defended everyday anew.

The fetus is the property of the entire society.

Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments. It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them.

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.

A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.

Democracy is disruptive... there is no right in a democratic civil society to be free of disruption.

A society is not 'free' merely because the freedoms the people are doing away with are those they voted at the last election to do without.

They are a very extensive minority who have suffered discrimination and who have the same right to participation in the promise and fruits of society as every other individual.

If political rights are necessary to set social rights in place, social rights are indispensable to make political rights 'real' and keep them in operation. The two rights need each other for their survival; that survival can only be their joint achievement.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can excersize their Constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

no man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control, yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own, better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right, not even killing the dog, will cure the bite

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the very sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.