Quotes About Rights

And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we only ask it for justice, it supposes that we reject fraternity, solidarity, organization, and association; and they brand us with the name of individualists. We

Be pleased, gentlemen, to dispose of what belongs to yourselves as you think proper, but leave us the disposal of the fruit of our own toil, to use it or exchange it as we see best. Declaim on self-sacrifice as much as you choose, it is all very fine and very beautiful, but be at least consistent.

in the social sciences authorities are rarely acknowledged. As each individual daily acts upon his own notions whether right or wrong, of morals, hygiene, and economy; of politics, whether reasonable or absurd, each one thinks he has a right to prattle, comment, decide, and dictate in these matters.

What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defence.

the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes. For

In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder -- is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?

For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?

The Law by Frédéric Bastiat

And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world?

according to Montesquieu, the persons, the liberties, the property, mankind itself, are nothing but materials to exercise the sagacity of lawgivers." Rousseau.

All that may be true, but I cannot recognize that the negro man is the only one who has pressing claims at this hour. To-day our government needs woman's conscience as well as man's judgment. And while I would not throw a straw in the way of the colored man, even though I know that he would vote against me as soon as he gets his vote, yet I do think that woman should have some power to defend herself from oppression, and equal laws as if she were a man.

government is to protect the rights of the low from the tyranny of the high and not the property of the high from the desperation of the low.

It is not natural or inevitable that half the world goes hungry that the freedom of markets trumps protection of the planet or that citizens' rights come second to those of corporations.

Equality is the soul of liberty there is, in fact, no liberty without it.

The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

I had the good fortune to be able to right an injustice that I thought was being heaped on young people by lowering the voting age, where you had young people that were old enough to die in Vietnam but not old enough to vote for their members of Congress that sent them there.

Bad men, like good men, are entitled to be tried and sentenced in accordance with law, and when it is shown to us that a person is serving an illegal sentence our obligation is to direct that proper steps be taken to correct the wrong done, without regard to the character of a particular defendant.

A man's limbs, (by which for the present we only understand those members which may be useful to him in fight, and the loss of which only amounts to mayhem by the common law) are also the gift of the wise creator; to enable man to protect himself from external injuries in a state of nature. To these therefore he has a natural inherent right; and they cannot be wantonly destroyed or disabled without a manifest breach of civil liberty.

I believe that the fight against crime starts in the home. Parents must take responsibility for their children and show them love and guidance from an early age so they learn to respect the rights of others.

P.B.S. Pinchback, a black politician originally from Mississippi and a supporter of Governor Warmoth's, put it more bluntly: "It is wholesale falsehood to say that we wish to force ourselves upon white people." In his view blacks "could get no rights the whites did not see fit to give them." But the colored Creoles couldn't reconcile this attitude with their urgent desire "to be respected and treated

Equal rights before the law, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, all of these things were...trampled underfoot and spat upon.

And hey Mr. CopAin't got no birth certificate on me now

Given that animals are nothing more than mere tools for the production of capital, the only way to abolish their exploitation is to challenge their status as properties and commodities.

If you can't offend people in a free society, then the question you have to ask yourself is, "Just how free is it?