Rights quotes
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"The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period."
"To the security of a free Constitution it [knowledge] contributes in various ways: by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights, to discern and provide against invasions of them, to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority, between burdens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society."
"The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway."
"But, although America cannot be justly charged with violating the rights of Turkey, Turkey nevertheless can be justly charged with violating the rights of America."
"To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense."
"I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free."
"I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health."
"Without authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them."
"In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people."
"This might explain why Obama gave billions to Wall Street crooks, and dragged the Iraq and Afghan wars on and on. Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing... We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns."
"Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians."
"As the interned American citizens of Japanese descent learned, the Bill of Rights provided them with little protection when it was needed."
"Democracy, in any rational form, also imposes conditions on majority rule. That's what the Bill of Rights is about, for example."
"A corporation is a state created institution, state supported institution, its concentration of private power, there is no reason why it should have the rights of persons."
"If you look at the minutes of the constitutional convention - which we have - Madison who was the main framer, proceeded to develop a system in which - as he put it - power would be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the more responsible set of men and who recognize the need to protect the rights of property owners. That's why in the constitutional system, the most powerful part of the whole system is the senate."
"Right to a speedy jury trial and so on and so forth. But what do they mean by 'person'? It certainly didn't mean individuals with flesh and blood like Native Americans who weren't persons, they don't have any rights."
"Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by 'sophisticated' methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real."
"Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population."
"As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less."
"What is failure for some is success for others. It depends on where they stand in the struggles over "democratic governance" and related rights - civil, social and economic, and broadly cultural, to adopt the framework of the Universal Declaration that is formally endorsed but constantly undermined."
