Quotes About Rights

Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.

Under that democracy, license was not confounded with freedom. Political 'equality' has been understood in two senses: as meaning either that all are to share absolutely alike, or that every man is to receive his due. Our ancestors preferred that 'equality' which does not efface the distinction between merit and worthlessness.

In some countries we have had the right to vote for less than 100 years, so the entry of women into political leadership has caused a tsunami.

To many people today, however, rights are something to protect us against the demands of morality.

The communists have a special disdain for lawyers. Perhaps it is because there will be no need for lawyers when there are no rights to defend. At any rate, Foster has said, "The pest of lawyers will be abolished.

Communism is the very opposite of liberalism. Liberalism means increased rights for the citizen; a curb on the powers of the central government; freedom of speech, religion, and the press.

Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.

Gun control advocates need to realize that passing laws that honest gun owners will not obey is a self-defeating strategy. Gun owners are not about to surrender their rights, and only the most foolish of politicians would risk the stability of the government by trying to use the force of the state to disarm the people.

The creation of property, therefore, is an act necessary to human survival–and as such the requirements of our survival as human beings sanction our taking those actions, and those sanctions are called rights.

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.

'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

Until the Married Women's Property Act of 1870, everything a married woman earned legally belonged to her husband. It wasn't until the Act of 1882 that she could retain her own property once she was married.

Just as you have the instinctive natural desire to be happy and overcome suffering, so do all sentient beings; just as you have the right to fulfill this innate aspiration, so do all sentient beings. So on what exact grounds do you discriminate?

What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?

There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose idea of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can't rob and you take away some of his liberty. You've got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow?

What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he is talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?

There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

Equal marriage makes a huge impact, because people see gay people being allowed to be happy," he says. "And these events involve families – and not just families but caterers and florists and hotels. And all these people are forced to accept that here are two people who are in love and want to build a family together . . . But I'm not complacent. Progress can falter, and rights can be taken away, and people can be repressed again very easily.

all living creatures are entitled to respect in their own right, not simply because of the utility they may possess for other humans.

The idea that people have natural rights to private property and to decide how and where they work became the bedrock of liberal capitalism. In liberal thought, if a person has a natural right to something, then no one, not even the state, can interfere with it.

A free and truly independent press - fiercely independent when necessary - is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.

One man's blasphemy doesn't override other people's free-speech rights, their freedom to publish, freedom of thought.

The only way to get gay issues off the front pages of Canadian newspapers is to grant gay and lesbian people our full civil equality and leave it alone.