Quotes About Rights

Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

a woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.

There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.

A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

The cruel injustice, the victorious crime, and the helplessness of innocence, led me to ask in my ignorance and weakness: Where is now the God of justice and mercy? and why have these wicked men the power thus to trample upon our rights, and to insult our feelings? and yet in the next moment came the consoling thought, the day of the oppressor will come at last.

I know there is a spirit among the slaves which would not much longer brook their degradation and their bondage. There are many Madison Washingtons and Nathaniel Turners in the South, who would assert their rights to liberty if you would take your feet from their necks and your sympathy and aid from their oppressors. (The Slaves Right to Revolt: An Address Delivered In Boston, Massachusetts, on 30 May 1848, Liberator June 9 1848)

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.

Another Christian concept, no less crazy, has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the 'equality of souls before God.' This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights...

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.

They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty. And let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She is unlearning to fear man: but the woman who unlearns to fear sacrifices her most womanly instincts.

Our duties - are the rights of others over us.

The Free Man is a Warrior. I do not believe in any Rights that are not supported by the power required to enforce them.

no one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any

The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.

Declaration of Independence: that all of our rights and liberties come to us from our Creator.

The right of the Capitalist to his capital and the right of the laborer to his union, are both conditioned upon the services they render to society; they both require social justification, and they can both be revoked if the common good is not served, just as the right to drive an automobile can be revoked if one refuses to respect the lives of pedestrians or even the lives of jaywalkers.

No matter what the ladies' contribution, the Revolution was not fought to prove that all women were created equal.