Selected rights quotes

1. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

2. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace.

3. The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.

4. In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.

5. We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases.

6. Either you can subscribe to the American creed which says that God endowed us with our rights, or you can subscribe to the abortion creed which says that those rights are the consequences of our mother's will.

7. You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.

8. The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

9. For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.

10. Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.

11. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

12. The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail.

13. I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote.

14. Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

15. Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns.

16. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

17. I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can.

18. We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth.

19. I believe in freedom for everyone, not just the black man.

20. I'm very, very blessed. But my safety, my privacy, and my respect are three things that I feel like are trying to be taken away from me right now. As a mother I have to speak up and say something. I have to speak up.

21. Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.

22. It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect.

23. When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

24. The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.

25. There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.

26. The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

27. Never be silent! Make your opinions known, and do not fear retribution for speaking your mind! The only ones who will aggressively try to silence you are the ones who do not respect the liberties and rights of the individual. Those people deserve our contempt, and when you draw them out of the shadows by exercising your civil right to freedom of speech, they will expose themselves for what they truly are.

28. Thoughts, words, ideas and information, free from any bonds or restrictions, is the very concrete which pours out a foundation strong enough that upon which a house, stable and lasting, of true freedom and liberty may be built.

29. Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

30. The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.

31. The police must obey the law while enforcing the law.

32. There is no requirement that police stop a person who enters a police station and states that he wishes to confess a crime or a person who calls the police to offer a confession because volunteered statements of any kind are not barred by the 5th Amendment.

33. The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

34. Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

35. The nation guarantees the nurture, education, and comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.

36. The only thing that counts is the right to know, to speak, to think - that, and the sanctity of the courts. Otherwise it's not America.

37. The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.

38. Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.

39. I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it'll work.

40. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

41. The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.

42. The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.

43. One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.

44. Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.

45. It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.

46. The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

47. We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system.

48. When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

49. Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature... no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.

50. I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

51. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong - throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

52. God's irony: that in order to fight and defeat the threat of terrorism, we shall have to be clear about the principle of justice that allows us to understand what is evil in terrorism. And that principle of justice is the claim of justice that is inherent in every innocent human life. But if that claim was there in the Twin Towers, if it was there on the airplanes that those terrorists attacked, you explain to me why it is not there in the womb!

53. As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending.

54. It is not an opinion that 'enhanced interrogation techniques' are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.

55. They're [Democrats] always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment.

56. And why is it 'homophobic' for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital.

57. 'You have babies at home. And you have a life. And if you don't, you have to realize that we're people and that we just need privacy and we need our respect. And those are things that you have to have as a human being.'

58. The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy, and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal, and have done so for a very long time:. Respondent would have us announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do.

59. The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution:. There should be, therefore, great resistance to : redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily takes to itself further authority to govern the country without express constitutional authority.

60. I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!

61. My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.

62. You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.

63. No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

64. They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.

65. The goal of the right is not to stop abortion but to demonize it, punish it and make it as difficult and traumatic as possible. All this it has accomplished fairly well, even without overturning Roe v. Wade.

66. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

67. A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

68. 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

69. I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.'

70. I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

71. If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

72. Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy's house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded- after all, the cop was protecting us.

73. To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

74. It's none of the governments business who comes to, in, on or from my body.

75. I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

76. 'The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.'

77. Everybody favors free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.

78. Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

79. It is true I wished to escape; and so I wish still; is not this lawful for all prisoners?

80. Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave. Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?

81. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity...

82. Freedom: An occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.

83. I love the freedoms we got in this country, i appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but i really appreciate my right to bear arms so i can shoot you if you try to burn mine.

84. The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.

85. Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

86. Right knows no boundaries and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.

87. If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.

88. It is still in the lap of the gods whether a society can succeed which is based on 'civil liberties and human rights' conceived as I have tried to describe them; but of one thing at least we may be sure: the alternatives that have so far appeared have been immeasurably worse.

89. But I do believe that a woman's truest place is in a home, with a husband and with children, and with large freedom, pecuniary freedom, personal freedom, and the right to vote.

90. Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.

91. Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

92. Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

93. Justice is the infrastructure of proprietorship.

94. There is one tradition in America I am proud to inherit. It is our first freedom and the truest expression of our Americanism: the ability to dissent without fear. It is our right to utter the words, 'I disagree.' We must feel at liberty to speak those words to our neighbors, our clergy, our educators, our news media, our lawmakers and, above all, to the one among us we elect President.

95. I desire not to keep my place in this government an hour longer than I may preserve England in its just rights, and may protect the people of God in such a just liberty of their consciences...

96. What is Freedom? - ye can tell That which slavery is, too well - For its very name has grown To an echo of your own.

97. To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

98. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

99. 'A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.'

100. 'If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.'