Rights quotes
4.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"The Refugee Convention of 1951 was a major breakthrough, outlining the rights of those displaced across borders as well as the legal obligations of states to protect them."
"Social media are a catalyst for the advancement of everyone's rights. It's where we're reminded that we're all human and all equal. It's where people can find and fight for a cause, global or local, popular or specialized, even when there are hundreds of miles between them."
"I consider non-violence to be compassion in action. It doesn’t mean weakness, cowering in fear, or simply doing nothing. It is to act without violence, motivated by compassion, recognising the rights of others."
"The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good - anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business."
"Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
"I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that."
"I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights."
"The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it."
"The freedom of thought and expression is one of the most sacred rights in this country."
"The sea, as well as the air, is a free and common thing to all; and a particular nation cannot pretend to have the right to the exclusion of all others, without violating the rights of nature and public usage."
"If you don't want women to do whatever they need to do then you must provide them with food, you must provide them with shelter and their basic human rights."
"If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as 'human rights'? How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder?"
"And they can appreciate, through personal experience, that the really decisive battleground of American freedom is in the hearts and minds of our own people... Each day we must ask that Almighty God will set and keep His protecting hand over us so that we may pass on to those who come after us the heritage of a free people, secure in their God-given rights and in full control of a Government dedicated to the preservation of those rights."
"People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get."
"Capitalism is our only moral system. All other systems take advantage of man's rights and liberties."
"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory."
"No man who is not willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can give a good reason why he should be entitled to the privilege of living in a free community."
"Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them."
"[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people."
"Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms."
