Quotes About Rights

How can you respect a culture if the woman has to walk several steps behind her man, has to stay in the kitchen and keep her mouth shut?

Fairness is not just about getting equal pay for equal work (though it is that too!) - it's about taking bold and challenging steps to raise incomes and protect those with little or no economic power.

For democracies to thrive, the majority must respect the rights of minorities to dissent, loudly.

One of the more powerful commentaries on America was the arch question Samuel Johnson posed in 1777: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

We should drop the bizarre American fiction that corporations are people, enjoying all the rights of citizens, including unfettered campaign donations as a form of free speech. Indeed, corporations possess greater rights than do people, as they cannot be jailed or executed, while citizens can and do suffer those fates. As the legal historian Zephyr Teachout has observed, the founders would have considered corporate campaign spending the essence of political corruption.

The idea of formulated 'rights ... comes not from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson ... but from the canon law of the Catholic Church.

What is the fairest fruit of the English Tree of Liberty? The security of our rights and of the law, and that no man shall be brought to trial where there is a prejudice against him.

Impoverished inhabitants of the state's most scenic area fight with fanatical determination to prevent a national park from opening up in their neighborhood, while the rails-to-trails program, regarded everywhere else in the union as a harmless scheme for family fun, is reviled in Kansas as an infernal design on the rights of property owners.

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.

The right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments

The purpose of a written constitution is to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, - these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us

Freedom of the person under the protection of habeas corpus. I deem one of the essential principles of our government.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should to rest on inference.