Quotes About Rights

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.

If freedom, democracy, and the rights of man are to be preserved through the ages, free men and women must accept the responsibilities that go with their freedoms.

America will never be whole as long as the right to life granted by our Creator is denied to the unborn.

On the fundamental dignity of the human person, there can be no relenting!

Throughout my life, I guess there's been one thing that's troubled me more than any other: the abuse of people and the theft of their democratic rights, whether by a totalitarian government, an employer, or anyone else. I probably got it from my father; Jack never bristled more than when he thought working people were being exploited.

James Madison said in 1788: "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Many countries of the world, I said, had constitutions, but in almost every case they were documents in which governments told their people what they could do. The United States had a constitution, I said, that was different from all the others because in it the people tell their government what it can do. Its three most important words are "We the people," its most important principle, freedom.

Cuncta fessa. Que quiere decir: Todo el mundo está cansado. El cansancio ante la inseguridad política y social es lo que llevó a Roma a perder sus derechos y sus libertades. El miedo provoca hambre de autoritarismo en las personas. Es un pésimo consejero el miedo.

Tacitus explains it thus: Cuncta fessa. Which means 'the whole world is tired.' Weariness in the face of political and social insecurity is what led to Rome losing its rights and freedoms. Fear induces a hunger for authoritarianism in people. Fear is a really bad adviser.

The rights that women had won through the long century and more of struggle were essentially rights of men. Women had had no option but to batter their way into the age-old fortress of male privilege, and storm the citadel where masculine supremacy still held out.

The denial of emotion is a terrible thing; what takes time is learning that the positive path is the education of emotion, not it's uncritical indulgence, which actually locks us far more firmly in our mutual isolation. Likewise, the denial of rights is a terrible thing; and what takes time to learn is that the opposite of oppression is not a wilderness of litigation and reparation but the nurture of concrete, shared respect.

All we have of freedom All we use or know This our fathers bought for us Long and long ago

Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man – least of all a junior – has a right to thrust these down other men's throats

You must not obey a majority, no matter how large, if it opposes your principles and opinions.' He said this to each new volunteer and repeated it over and over to him, until it was engraved on his mind. 'The largest majority is often only an organized mob whose noise can no more change the false into the true than it can change black into white or night into day. And a minority, conscious of its rights, if those rights are based on moral principles, will sooner or later become a just majority.

On such an approach, Mill argues, anyone could demand as a 'social right' that nobody act in any way falling short of her own standards of perfection. He sees this as a 'monstrous' principle with the potential to justify virtually any interference with individual liberty – ultimately leaving us no zone of freedom beyond, perhaps, 'that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them' (Mill [1859] 1974: 158).

Man's rights are linked with man's duties, and when they are distorted into extravagant claims for a species of freedom and equality and worldly aggrandizement which human character cannot sustain, they degenerate from rights to vices.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.

Many of us persons of the tinted persuasion care about human rights and artistic freedom too.

If you want pay, then just be gay.

When you've fallen from the sky, been abandoned by your friend, suffered police brutality, metamorphosed into a goat, lost your work as well as your wife, learned the power of hatred and regained human shape, what is there left to do but, as you would no doubt phrase it, demand your rights?

But but but what is the point of giving persons Freedom of Speech,' declaimed Butt the Hoopoe, 'if you then say they must not utilize same? And is not the Power of Speech the greatest Power of all? Then surely it must be exercised to the full?

free speech isn't absolute. We have the freedoms we fight for and we lose those we don't defend.

Nobody has the right to not be offended.