Quotes About Rights

The Supreme Court thus identified states as the ultimate defenders of rights, although Southern states had repeatedly proven themselves the ultimate violators of those rights.

The eighteenth-century origins of the "right to bear arms" explicitly excluded Black people.19 South Carolina encoded into law that the enslaved could not "carry or make use of fire-arms or any offensive weapons whatsoever" unless "in the presence of some white person.

Even for Detroit's liberal mayor, peace was based on black people quietly and gracefully accepting the fact that they had no right to their rights.

According to Human Rights Watch, "the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeds the proportion among state residents in every single state.

The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that as "many as 12 percent of eligible voters nationwide may not have government-issued photo ID," and that "percentage is likely even higher for students, seniors and people of color.

For Johnson, nearly 250 years of unpaid toil to build one of the wealthiest nations on earth did not earn citizenship.

If you have a badge, you have the government's go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens." 5 He further denounced cops as "jack-booted government thugs [who have] more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us." 6

It denied the enslaved the right to bear arms; ignored the right to self-defense for Black people; and put in place a "large-scale military machinery," the militia, "to crack down [on] any conspiracies or uprisings." 15 As early as 1639, Virginia prohibited Africans from carrying guns because "what white Southerners feared the most … [was] an armed black man unafraid to retaliate against both the system of slavery and those who fought to defend it.

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers-that-be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.

And most importantly perhaps, children can learn about their rights, share their knowledge with the children of other nations, identify problems with them and establish how they might work together to address them.

Here once again education is crucial, it enables children to be become more aware of their rights and to exercise them in a respectful manner which helps them shape their own future.

Justice should not be so fragile a commodity that it cannot be extended beyond the species barrier of Homo Sapiens.

Was sind das für Konstellationen in der Gegenwart, in denen zufällige oder angeborene Unterschiede ausgesucht werden, um daran soziale Anerkennung oder gar Menschen- und Bürgerrechte zu koppeln?

America, GET RID OF YOUR GOD DAMN GUNS.

The only way to ensure equality for women is to clearly declare it in our Constitution.

This was especially true of the law schools, closed during the wave of legislation against the Negro, at the very time the largest possible number of Negroes needed to know the law for the protection of their civil and political rights. In other words, the thing which the patient needed most to pass the crisis was taken from him that he might more easily die.

We are blind to the fact that what we do to them deprives them of their rights; we do not want to see this because we profit from it, and so we make use of what are really morally irrelevant differences between them and ourselves to justify the difference in treatment.

Somewhat more broadly, I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law.

I think that every state in the union should recognize same-sex marriage.

Others' freedom is not an internal affair. It is an eternal affair.

The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent and sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious origin.

What have been called "women's issues" are freedom issues. Body control. The right of human beings to control their own bodies is a freedom issue. Respect. The right of human beings to be treated institutionally with respect as a human being is a freedom issue.

These colonial governors, who were not always very educated or even very educable, could convince themselves that what was merely a temporary privilege should become a permanent right. (p.97)

The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.