Quotes About Rights

I am ready to debate how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty.

This isn't about grabbing people's guns; this isn't about changing the Second Amendment. This simply says that someone who is on the terrorist watch list - a dangerous terrorist - should not be able to purchase a gun.

We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.

Non-citizen terrorist suspects are not members of the American national community, and they have no proper claim on the rights Americans accord one another.

Preventing terrorist attacks is of the highest important, but trashing the Constitution is not the right way to do it.

I think that it's very, very hard for the NRA to continue to defend the position that people who are on the terrorist watch list should be allowed to buy firearms in this country. That's their position. I don't know how they stand by it.

This is a big debate concerning the values of the society in question: Whether the risk of a terrorist act is more important than the 100 percent right to privacy.

When a terrorist attack comes, you will not necessarily know who did it. What you can know is that certain kinds of leaders will use that to suspend your rights.

What are we fighting the terrorists for if we ourselves do not even stand up for democracy - civil liberties and fundamental rights - which includes independence of the judiciary?

It's not law-abiding gun owners that are the problem here - it's Islamic terrorists.

Americans need to understand the significance of having their civil liberties dismantled. It doesn't just affect terrorists and foreigners, it affects us all.

We can't gather the intelligence we need to foil future attacks, if we are blindly granting terrorists the right to remain silent. But for some reason, we've already done that - with the terrorist who tried to bring down Flight 253.

The great difficulty with Guantanamo is it was perceived correctly as being a place where people were not being detained subject to rules. I don't think the world thinks that you can't detain suspected terrorists - the world thinks you can do that, but you have to do it pursuant to rules and to clear charges.

I want to collect more records from terrorists, but less records from innocent Americans. The Fourth Amendment was what we fought the Revolution over! John Adams said it was the spark that led to our war for independence, and I'm proud of standing for the Bill of Rights, and I will continue to stand for the Bill of Rights.

Pat Toomey has worked to allow suspected terrorists to buy guns in this country, and that is just an outrageous position. Of all the kind of tough issues, this one should not be a tough call.

The NRA is interested in protecting the civil rights of Americans, not protecting the ability of terrorists to get guns.

A cardinal principle that we must not stray from - no exceptions - is that your genetic information is your business in terms of who sees it. Nobody should be gaining access to that information without your explicit permission, and nobody should be requiring you to take a genetic test unless you decide that that's what you want to do.

If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.

We have not created any sort of democratic test for any nation.

There's no religious test under the constitution. That's what it says. Period.

Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana does not give anyone the right to deny services to anyone in this state. It is simply a balancing test used by our federal courts and jurisdictions across the country for more than two decades.

The ADA is the living testament to our Nation's commitment that we will always stand up for our neighbors' right to live fulfilling lives.

In medical school, students are immersed in the realm of medical ethics. It's where new doctors study, learn right and wrong, ask tough questions, and discuss things like end of life care, genetic testing, and patients' rights. In lots of ways, it's the most important part of being a compassionate and competent doctor.