Rights quotes
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"Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have the same rights."
"The tendency of organization is to kill out the spirit which gave it birth. Organizations do not protect the sacredness of the individual; their tendency is to sink the individual in the mass, to sacrifice his rights, and to immolate him on the altar of some fancied good."
"The promises of Fidel Castro's so-called revolution of pluralism and democracy, were and continue to be a false promise and a betrayal of all basic human rights."
"This is America, and you have the right to remain sick. If you choose to treat yourself and your family, that is within your rights, and is necessarily your sole decision based on what you know to be best."
"My parents are big liberals and taught us to never trust a government that rids their people of basic human rights."
"Suffering gives us no special rights."
"The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity , with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides."
"I just want to remind people that the task of those who support reproductive rights and reproductive justice didn't change based on who is in the White House. We have leadership that is not supportive of what we're trying to do, but the demand for justice shouldn't be modulated."
"What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man ... the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights."
"We must recognise that we have a great inheritance in our possession, which represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries; that there is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause. Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause?"
"What is at the heart of all national problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions."
"The ideal of perfect Success is an ideal belonging to the same sort of individual as the inventor of Equal Rights of man and Perfectibility."
"There's a dilemma over how to balance concrete economic interests with critical opinions on the state of human rights. It's the human rights that suffer, and that's a great price to pay."
"It's suspiciously quiet in here, and there's a Tod shaped dent in the bean bag. For the sake of both my sanity and my temper, I'm going to pretend I can't tell that you're in his lap, so could you pretend that this is still my house and you are still my daughter, and I'm within my parental rights to kick your boyfriend out after 11:00 p.m.?"
"Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit."
"The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise men, calmly look around us and consider what is best to be done...Let associations and combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just rights."
"It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them."
"Every one knows that the exercise of military power is forever dangerous to civil rights; and we have had recent instances of violences that have been offer'd to private subjects."
"Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framedon the ratio of owners and of owning."
"Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country."
