Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Protecting civil rights and liberties for all citizens is essential because oppression threatens the entire civilization.
In plain terms
Guard all people rights because injustice harms our whole society.
What can you take from it?
Civil liberties protect the foundation of civilization.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • civil society
  • legal reform

Putting it to work

  • protect minority rights
  • enforce equal treatment
  • oppose discrimination

Questions to consider

  • How do we balance security and liberty?
  • What happens when rights are ignored?

Another view

Rights protections can be slow to implement during emergencies.

More from Franklin Delano Roosevelt

  1. In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expr…

    Permalink to quote #17
  2. We must be the great arsenal of Democracy.

    Permalink to quote #19
  3. A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted - in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk for…

    Permalink to quote #16

Related quotes

  1. It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

    James OtisJames Otis quote #8
  2. It cannot be too clearly understood that this is not a free country, and it will be an evil day for the legal profession when it is.

    A. P. HerbertA. P. Herbert quote #11
  3. Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at al…

    John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill quote #37