Rights quotes
4.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of the United States; its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States, in analogous situations."
"The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!"
"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man."
"The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper."
"To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens...this brings us to the point at which are to commence the higher branches of education . . . . To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order."
"It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king."
"The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for."
"They don't have special rights because we have civil rights laws that protect them. The laws work both ways."
"The argument on the other side of special rights is completely bogus. It's bogus because you could make exactly the same claim about racial or ethnic or religious minorities."
"As more and more people awaken to the threats against our basic rights online, we must start a debate - everywhere - about the web we want."
"We don't have rights until we claim them."
"America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism."
"The right to kill: supposing the life of X ... were linked with our own so that the two deaths had to be simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply 'yes'> then we have the right to kill."
"The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds."
"A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much."
"If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate."
"The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at."
"Since the days of Greece and Rome the word 'citizen' was a title of honor. We have often seen more emphasis put on the rights of citizenship than on its responsibilities."
"In my judgment, the slogan "black power" and what has been associated with it has set the civil rights movement back considerably in the United States over the period of the last several months."
"One of the most important parts of the civil rights movement that people don't talk about was these mass meetings. It's like "Movement Church." It's a combination of the music of the movement and the church. Those mass meetings are where people got the energy to go on to the next day."
