Quotes About Fundamental Rights

#1. The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

David Blunkett

#2. Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it's a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women's rights.

Elif Safak

#3. When you have incidences like the Trayvon Martin verdict, the erosion of certain fundamental rights like voting, it just reminds us that we're always one Supreme Court justice vote away from losing the progress that has been made.

Terri Sewell

#4. Of course we desire education and we think it is a good thing, but you don't have to have education in order to know that you want certain fundamental rights, you have got aspirations, you have got acclaims. It has nothing to do with education whatsoever.

Nelson Mandela

#5. The public is the tribunal before which all art is judged - not the critics or the academies. The public is the artist's only patron, and has certain fundamental rights. It will submit to education, and will respond to suggestion, but it will not be bullied.

Walter J. Phillips

#6. Just as we Liberal Democrats opposed the flawed logic of that war in Iraq - we will oppose the flawed government claim that we have to surrender our fundamental rights in order to improve our security.

Charles Kennedy

#7. If you wish to have free access to the single market, then you have to accept the fundamental rights as well as obligation that come from it.

Angela Merkel

#8. My hope is that the Pope Francis visit to Cuba will remind all the Cuban citizens that they possess dignity and fundamental rights that come from God and that the Castro regime has no claim on changing what is 100% God-given.

Marco Rubio

#9. In this context, the church supports and favors every effort today to seek the full development of the personality of all human beings, and to promote their fundamental rights, their dignity and liberty.

Claudio Hummes

#10. With so many of our fundamental rights hanging in the balance, it is not good enough to simply roll the dice, hoping a nominee has changed his past views. It's not good enough to think, 'This is the best we can expect from this president'.

Barbara Boxer

#11. One of the fundamental rights of mankind should be that of wearing as many or as few clothes as one likes inside one's own home.

Sachin Kundalkar

#12. Law matters, because it keeps us safe, because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms, and because it is the foundation of our democracy.

Elena Kagan

#13. Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights.

Garry Kasparov

#14. We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#15. I think the government has a role in protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens.

Al Franken

#16. We're talking about in the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8.

Kamala Harris

#17. Each state, so that it does not abridge the great fundamental rights belonging, under the Constitution, to all citizens, may grant or withhold such civil rights as it pleases; all that is required is that, in this respect, its laws shall be impartial.

Lyman Trumbull

#18. This is a time when the protections of Americans' liberties are directly at risk, as are the checks and balances that have served to constrain abuses of power for more than 200 years. The Supreme Court is relied upon by all of to us protect our fundamental rights.

Patrick Leahy

#19. What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.

B.R. Ambedkar

#20. May no one use religion as a pretext for actions against human dignity and against the fundamental rights of every man and woman.

Pope Francis

#21. Fundamental rights belong to the human being just because you are a human being.

Desmond Tutu

#22. What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.

Tom G. Palmer

#23. < ... > this Revolutionary ideology, epitomized by the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, showed that the very idea of slavery is a fiction or fraud, since liberty and equality are fundamental rights that no one can legitimately lose.

David Brion Davis

#24. The fundamental right of freedom of thought and expression is essential. If you curtail what the other fellow says and does, you curtail what you yourself may say and do.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#25. The government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.

Thurgood Marshall

#26. The passage of time hasn't changed the fact that abortion is a serious, lethal violation of fundamental human rights, and that women and children deserve better, and that the demands of justice, generosity, and compassion require that the right to life be guaranteed to everyone.

Chris Smith

#27. An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental.

Thomas Jefferson

#28. For over 30 years the Endangered Species Act has suffered from many fundamental flaws, the most notable being a blatant disregard for property rights,.

Chris Cannon

#29. Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

Maria Conchita Alonso

#30. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right
it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society.

Pope Benedict XVI

#31. We have enshrined in our founding documents and promoted the fundamental truth, all around the world, that the rights of all men, women and children ,not simply Americans come from God.

Marco Rubio

#32. There are some rights that are so fundamental to our society that you'd think the public debate would be closed on them. The right of every American citizen to vote - regardless of age, race, or income level - is one of them.

Martin O'Malley

#33. It just seems so fundamental to me. I'm able to marry the person I wanted to marry. That's the fundamental human imperative. Those of us who have been lucky enough should expand these rights to others.

Chelsea Clinton

#34. Modern redistribution is built around a logic of rights and a principle of equal access to a certain number of goods deemed to be fundamental.

Thomas Piketty

#35. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
[ Live 8 Concert, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2 July 2005]

Nelson Mandela

#36. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

Desmond Tutu

#37. Rejecting the fundamental provision of the Civil Rights Act is a rejection of the foundational promise of America that all men and women should be treated equally, a promise for which many Americans have lost their lives.

John Yarmuth

#38. The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.

William James

#39. The environment is the most important, the most fundamental, civil-rights issue ... Four out of every five toxic-waste dumps in America is in a black neighborhood.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

#40. Criminalization is a human rights issue because it disregards the fundamental principles of self-determination, bodily integrity, and sexual freedom.14

Melinda Chateauvert

#41. Maintaining the balance of power should be as fundamental to American foreign policy as the Bill of Rights is to domestic policy.

George Friedman

#42. Popular privileges are consistent with a state of society in which there is great inequality of position. Democratic rights, on the contrary, demand that there should be equality of condition as the fundamental basis of the society they regulate.

Benjamin Disraeli

#43. I am willing to take any measures when it comes to the fundamental principle of human rights.

Ban Ki-moon

#44. The person who loves his life will lose it: it could not be otherwise, for to love one's life is a fundamental denial of God's sovereignty, of God's rights, and a brazen elevation of self to the apogee of one's perception, and therefore an idolatrous focus on self, which is the heart of all sin

D. A. Carson

#45. We must vigilantly stand on guard within our own borders for human rights and fundamental freedoms which are our proud heritage ... w e cannot take for granted the continuance and maintenance of those rights and freedoms.

John Diefenbaker

#46. It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right.

Teri Reynolds

#47. The bringing-about of order is the first and fundamental task of government. We accept limits on our rights for the sake of a larger social compact all the time.

Jon Meacham

#48. The issue of human rights is one of the most fundamental human issues and also one of the most sensitive and controversial.

Ali Khamenei

#49. The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount ... If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.

Harry Truman

#50. We call on the Senate to reject any judicial nominee who does not affirm fundamental civil rights, including a woman's right [to obtain an abortion on demand]. The threat an [pro-life] judiciary poses to women's lives demands nothing less.

Susana Martinez

#51. it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.

Matthew Desmond

#52. No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#53. All women and girls have the fundamental right to live free of violence. This right is enshrined in international human rights and humanitarian law. And it lies at the heart of my UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign.

Ban Ki-moon

#54. Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society ... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.

Stephen Harper

#55. We can't build a safer world with honorable intentions and good will alone. Achieving the fundamental goals our nation seeks in world affairs - peace, human rights, economics progress national independence and international stability - means supporting our friends and defending our interests.

Ronald Reagan

#56. Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can't take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can't take care of anything. It should not be seen as a privilege or as a benefit, but a fundamental human right.

Faye Wattleton

#57. The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right.

Robert Kennedy

#58. 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

#59. Those who have been outspoken in advocating human rights during these last forty years, have themselves grabbed the most fundamental of human rights from the people of the Third-World countries.

Ali Khamenei

#60. Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can't be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can't be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights.

Hugo Chavez

#61. Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)
As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57

Orit Badouk Epstein

#62. The right to lead a life free of fear is a fundamental right of all living beings. But this fundamental right is being brutally violated by humans in animal testing, meat and dairy industry, circus, zoos, aquariums, and sports.

Ama H. Vanniarachchy

#63. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.

Garrett Hardin

#64. We do believe that freedom, the right to choose, the right to vote, respect and justice is the fundamental right of all people. All people must obtain these rights.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

#65. In the end, abortion is an issue of fundamental human rights. To force women to undergo pregnancy and childbirth against their will is to deprive them of the right to make basic decisions about their lives and well-being, and to give that power to the state.

Katha Pollitt

#66. It's something fundamental to me, human rights that people are equal under law simply because they are human beings. And I can no more imagine falling in love with someone who believed, for instance, as Orthodox Jews do, that women are unclean during their menstrual periods.

Susan Jacoby

#67. Fundamental violations of human rights always lead to people feeling less and less human.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#68. I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights, everyone has not only the freedom and the right but the obligation to say what Pope Francis thinks for the common good ... we have the right to have this freedom openly without offending.

Pope Francis

#69. The global response to global terrorism must not endanger fundamental human rights and freedoms.

Stjepan Mesic

#70. The problem with today's culture is that we have too many rights and not enough wrongs.

Ron Brackin

#71. The idea of human rights as a fundamental principle can be seen to underlie throughout Islamic teachings.

Ali Khamenei

#72. Relativism should be confronted where it damages fundamental human rights, because we're not relativists if we believe that the human being should be at the centre of society and the rights of every human being should be respected.

Rocco Buttiglione

#73. Japan and Australia share the universal values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights.

Shinzo Abe

#74. The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government.

James Madison

#75. Health care is not a privilege. It's a right. It's a right as fundamental as civil rights. It's a right as fundamental as giving every child a chance to get a public education.

Rod Blagojevich

#76. The inviolability of the seal of confession is so fundamental to the very nature of the sacrament that any proposal which undermines that inviolability is a challenge to the rights of every Catholic to freedom of religion and conscience.

Sean Brady