Rights quotes

The government argues that First Amendment rights are outweighed by the need to prosecute those who transmit classified information and documents.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

Freedom is a right ultimately defended by the sacrifice of America’s servicemen and women.

America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

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.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.

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

In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

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.

A right delayed is a right denied.

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

Some of my colleagues argue that by further curtailing our Second Amendment rights, they can enhance public safety. Fine, the burden of proof is on them.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

Due process should matter.

There is a group of people that I think in good faith honestly believe that further curtailing our Second Amendment rights will enhance public safety. But there’s another group that just hates the Second Amendment.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

Our rights are not absolute. Our rights can be curtailed in the interest of public safety.

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.