Top 100 People Rights Quotes
#1. Under the worst conditions, horrendous conditions, people still, you know, fight for their rights and don't just succumb.
Noam Chomsky
#2. As we have seen from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's example, even one justice can profoundly alter the meaning of those words for our citizens. Even one justice can deeply affect the rights and liberties of the American people.
Edward Kennedy
#3. The NSA is not looking through people's address books and Visa bills and violating the rights of average citizens. That's not what the NSA does.
Michael Gerson
#4. It seemed like this was one big Prozac nation, one big mess of malaise. Perhaps the next time half a million people gather for a protest march on the White House green it will not be for abortion rights or gay liberation, but because we're all so bummed out.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
#5. Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
Thomas Jefferson
#6. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. They are not-in Mississippi. They are not-in Montgomery. That is why I am here today ... You want to shut up every colored person who wants to fight for the rights of his people!.
Paul Robeson
#7. We've placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities.
Randy Pausch
#8. I'm 21 years old, and it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about, but I'm in the 1 percent as far as my income and tax bracket. But now that I'm here, there's no amount of money you can wave in front of my face that will make me understand depriving people of human rights.
Halsey
#9. One of the biggest issues that we face is that we have people who have their own particular concerns, whether it's on abortion, birth control, divorce and remarriage, civil rights or social justice.
William P. Leahy
#10. I believe that the real expression of your religious beliefs is shown in the daily pattern of your life, in what you contribute to your surroundings and what you take away without infringing on the rights of other people.
Judy Garland
#11. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff.
Mark Steyn
#12. We think of dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly intelligent animals and if we kept pigs as pets and reared dogs for food, we would probably reverse our order of preference. Are we turning persons into bacon?
Peter Singer
#13. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights.
Alex Kozinski
#14. Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned
I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.
Frank Zappa
#15. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. People
Yuval Noah Harari
#16. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.
Elton John
#17. I wanted to represent minorities in the respect of people who had been bullied in school or people who were gay or lesbian or trans or people who aren't blonde haired and blue-eyed. I have short hair, and I am covered in tattoos. I like showing people that it's within their rights to be different.
Ruby Rose
#18. If the people lose control of the arteries of trade and the natural sources of mechanical power, the nationalization of all industry should soon be expected. Our forefathers were alert to resist all encroachments upon their rights. If we wish to maintain our rights, we can do no less.
Calvin Coolidge
#19. No other country in the world disenfranchises people who are released from prison in a manner even remotely resembling the United States. In fact, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has charged that U.S. disenfranchisement policies are discriminatory and violate international law.
Michelle Alexander
#20. I'll do anything to pass the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], even if it means wearing babydoll nightgowns and padded bras, if that will make people less afraid.
Joan Hackett
#22. [Button] If Gay and Lesbian people are given civil rights, soon everyone will want them
James Howe
#23. People will never get in touch with democracy. It's always surrounded by bodyguards.
Ljupka Cvetanova
#24. IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COULD LEARN WHAT I KNOW OF THE FIERCE HATRED OF THE PRIESTS OF ROME AGAINST OUR INSTITUTIONS, OUR SCHOOLS, OUR MOST SACRED RIGHTS, AND OUR SO DEARLY BOUGHT LIBERTIES, THEY WOULD DRIVE THEM OUT AS TRAITORS!
Abraham Lincoln
#25. This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#26. Religions all have the same timeline ... First the people feel the need to worship something. The sun or the giant corn of ear. That's the first thing. Then the guys say okay, now that we've got the giant corn thing going, how can we use it to oppress women?
Carol Anshaw
#27. Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.
John Adams
#28. We've always been involved with issues that deal with the fundamental human rights of people, whether that means the right to political freedom or the right to breathe air that's clean.
Mary Travers
#29. Homeowners' Association: the means whereby people who own homes are able to transfer their rights to the neighborhood control freaks.
Ron Brackin
#30. Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.
Elihu Root
#31. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#32. There's a special place in hell for people who mistreat animals.
Tara Sue Me
#33. Most importantly, the epidemic was only news when it was not killing homosexuals. In this sense, AIDS remained a fundamentally gay disease, newsworthy only by the virtue of the fact that it sometimes hit people who weren't gay,
Randy Shilts
#34. Nine people out of ten (in Germany and England, perhaps ten people) would rather wait for their rights than fight for their rights.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#35. First and foremost, I'm a feminist. And basically that stems from a strong belief that all people and creatures deserve equal opportunity, rights and respect.
Kathy Najimy
#36. Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights.
Doris Lessing
#37. I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.
Nadine Gordimer
#38. Progressivism is an active channel for social equity, social liberalism, and political rights for all people.
Henry Johnson Jr
#40. Would America have been America without her Negro people?
W.E.B. Du Bois
#41. My parents, man, they're just the most loving, encouraging ... They're like those people who define themselves through their role as parents before people in their own rights.
Riz Ahmed
#43. The only marches I have ever witnessed under a banner of so-called "Christianity" have been to enforce oppression and incite hatred and intolerance - and to deprive people of their equal civil rights.
Christina Engela
#44. Educated people can make their own choices about their governments. And certainly for women, an education allows you to understand your rights.
Laura Bush
#45. Today there are people trying to take away rights that our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for: our right to vote, our right to choose, affordable quality education, equal pay, access to health care. We the people can't let that happen.
Kerry Washington
#46. Look at the Civil Rights Movement. Look at any kind of fight for change. People had to keep fighting and taking their rights. Rights are never given to you. They have to be fought for and they have to be taken.
Jehane Noujaim
#47. We need, in a special way, to work twice as hard to help people understand that the animals are fellow creatures, that we must protect them and love them as we love ourselves.
Cesar Chavez
#48. What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.
Zoe Lofgren
#49. The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.
Ashley Montagu
#50. Lesbian and gay people are a permanent part of the American workforce, who currently have no protection from the arbitrary abuse of their rights on the job.
Coretta Scott King
#51. Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
Alfie Kohn
#52. No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere.
Barack Obama
#53. No branch of the law is of more importance to the counsellor, the statesman, or the citizen, than a thorough acquaintance with the Constitution and laws of the Federal Government, as they are administered and as they affect the rights of the people.
Samuel Freeman Miller
#54. She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn't she and Carol?
Patricia Highsmith
#55. Tanzania is standing by the people of Zimbabwe including President Mugabe ... Mugabe is there, he is president, he has been elected. If Tanzania had simply said, stupid, you're hopeless, a murderer, a violator of basic human rights; does that remove Mugabe from office? It doesn't.
Jakaya Kikwete
#56. Instead of defining a few rights, Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 84, "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations.
Thom Hartmann
#57. Mandela's message will never die. It will continue to inspire freedom fighters and give confidence to people who defend just causes and universal rights.
Francois Hollande
#58. A reduction of meat consumption by only 10% would result in about 12 million more tons of grain for human consumption. This additional grain could feed all of the humans across the world who starve to death each year- about 60 million people!
Marc Bekoff
#59. Most people think that animals are third-class citizens. Very few people really see animals as "the others" with whom we inhabit this planet. They have equal rights with us.
Sigourney Weaver
#60. Eritrean people are strong and caring. And despite all that we had been through we were brimming with optimism. Our country was on the verge of huge change.
Abeba Habtu
#61. [A]n unpleasant nest of nasty, materialistic and aggressive people, careless of the rights of others, imperfectly democratic at home though quick to see the minor slaveries of others, and greedy without end.
Isaac Asimov
#62. When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights. The people can act only by their agents and, within the powers conferred upon them, their acts must be considered as the acts of the people.
John Marshall
#63. When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.
Gloria Allred
#64. Just like equality, rights and limited liability companies, liberty is something that people invented and that exists only in their imagination. From
Yuval Noah Harari
#65. When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,
Dick Cheney
#66. All repressive laws must be revoked, and laws introduced to protect the rights of the people.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#67. I insist that people - wherever they live - have their rights and they must be able to fight for them.
Vladimir Putin
#68. As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.
James Bovard
#69. The rights of the people to the exercise and fruits of their own industry can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods.
Thomas Jefferson
#70. There is nobody that I know who believes that Bank of America is a human being who should be entitled for the same constitutional rights that the people of our country are.
Bernie Sanders
#71. Most governments in Latin America have failed to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their right to their own traditional territories.
Bianca Jagger
#72. People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others.
Ron Paul
#73. I argue that in a world where people must support their opinions with evidence and reason rather than faith, we would experience less conflict over issues like assisted suicide, gay rights, birth control, and sexual morality.
Jerry A. Coyne
#74. My own country's record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect.
Hillary Clinton
#75. No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.
Noah Webster
#76. A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.
William Jennings Bryan
#77. The Second Amendment, like all of our rights, is reliant on a moral and virtuous people. Without that, nothing else matters. Man can not rule himself if ... moral sentiment is missing.
Glenn Beck
#78. Conscious of my own weakness, I can only seek fervently the guidance of the Ruler of the Universe, and, relying on His all-powerful aid, do my best to restore Union and peace to a suffering people, and to establish and guard their liberties and rights.
George B. McClellan
#79. I'm not representing any organization. I represent the people of Ohio, and a lot of people in Ohio feel very strongly about their Second Amendment rights.
Rob Portman
#80. If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all!
Henry Waxman
#81. In the areas which have been disturbed people are living cordially with the Security Forces. In areas like Gulu people are living peacefully. There is scrupulous respect of human rights.
Yoweri Museveni
#82. People have opinions about everything and especially when you get into that world of animal rights or tree rights or whatever rights, they all have an opinion.
Danica Patrick
#83. A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
#84. What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty ... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.
Elbridge Gerry
#85. I will take all my rights! Can you deliver them to my house?
Ljupka Cvetanova
#86. When people believe that the local government and economy serve their needs. There is little desire to protest.
Auliq Ice
#87. I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.
Rita Dove
#88. The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.
Abraham Lincoln
#89. Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I've ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing 'M*A*S*H'; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn't want to disrupt his kids' schooling.
Sanjeev Bhaskar
#90. I have gay friends, I support gay rights, I have nothing against the gay community, but when I see two guys kissing, I think it's gross. And, by the way, it's gross when 99% of straight people do it, too.
Artie Lange
#91. I care about people's human rights and, as a country, we have a very proud record indeed. But I'm also realistic about what we can do ... we can raise those issues with leaders and we can talk about those issues, and we do that.
John Key
#92. My idea of freedom is that we should protect the rights of people to believe what their conscience dictates, but fight equally hard to protect people from having the beliefs of others imposed upon them.
Justin Trudeau
#93. As a so-called "civilized" people, and as members of a society in search of lasting peace in the world, we cannot remain callous to our responsibility toward nature and insensitive to the inherent rights of the animals.
Nathaniel Altman
#94. People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights.
Peter Ustinov
#95. No one contends that the other Amendments that preserve rights of 'the people' -the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth-do not preserve individuals' rights. The same must be true of the Second.
Jed Babbin
#96. The basis of peace and stability, in any society, has to be the fullest respect for the human rights of all its people.
John Hume
#97. I think it's so important as an artist to stand up for what you believe in, and I think that if equal rights is something that you really believe in, and you have a voice that people listen to, and you need to share that - I think that's really important.
Betty Who
#98. Maybe I'm less sensitive to these issues because I see that what people need first is economic security, and only when they have that can they afford to focus on human rights.
Peter Munk
#99. All people deserve to be treated with dignity and have their human rights respected, no matter who they are or whom they love.
Hillary Clinton
#100. Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
Samuel Gompers
