Top 90 Quotes About Natural Rights
#1. All ... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law.
Thomas Jefferson
#2. These our great natural rights we keep to ourselves; we will not have them tampered with; respecting them we give to you no commission whatsoever.
Caleb Cushing
#3. Our natural rights come from an authority beyond the petty rule of man.
Bryant McGill
#4. Ours is a representative republic with a Constitution in which is recognized the natural law and the natural rights of man. It is a republic with a spiritual foundation characterized by freedom - freedom for the individual and for his society.
Ezra Taft Benson
#5. If two individuals enter into a contract to commit trespass, theft, robbery or murder upon a third, the contract is unlawful and void, simply because it is a contract to violate natural justice, or men's natural rights.
Lysander Spooner
#6. I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.
Thomas Paine
#7. Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.
Thomas Jefferson
#9. How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.
Jefferson Davis
#10. [O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.
Thomas Jefferson
#11. [The] prevailing reason at this time is, that the Act of Parliament is against the Magna Charta, and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void.
Thomas Hutchinson
#12. The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.
Thomas Jefferson
#13. Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.
Thomas Paine
#14. We cannot accept any code or creed that uniformly defrauds woman of all her natural rights.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#15. Natural rights, nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, elevated nonsense, nonsense going on stilts.
John Stuart Mill
#16. Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.
Calvin Coolidge
#17. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.
Marquis De Lafayette
#18. Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.
Thomas Jefferson
#19. No one can take away your Natural Rights, but they can do great damage making you think they can.
J.S.B. Morse
#20. [Louis Brandeis] believes in natural rights of speech and liberty and the right to pursue happiness.
Jeffrey Rosen
#21. I am in everything that stands for justice and the natural rights of free men everywhere.I am American Amaranth
J.R. Ortiz
#22. For [Louis] Brandeis, it's not a technical question of channeling what would James Madison say. It's how do we take these inherent human natural rights of liberty and translate them into an age of new technolog
Jeffrey Rosen
#23. In speaking of natural rights, therefore, it is essential to remember that these alleged rights have no political force whatsoever, unless recognized and enforced by the state.
Charles Edward Merriam
#24. I grew up in a family that despised not only communism but collectivism, socialism, and any 'ism' that deprived the individual of his or her natural rights.
Rand Paul
#25. The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely, and pursue that which motivates us not because man or some government says so, but because these are God-given natural rights.
Mark R. Levin
#26. Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.
Thomas Jefferson
#27. Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever.
Joseph Priestley
#28. It's a difficult position. Do you endanger your child to fight for the right thing, or do you keep your mouth shut and let your child grow up in a world where their natural rights are stripped away from them?
Jamie Bell
#29. To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.
Carl L. Becker
#30. We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off.
John Trudell
#31. As they do not see, behind the benefits of civilization, marvels of invention and construction which can only be maintained by great effort and foresight, they imagine that their role is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural rights.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
#32. A natural right in the strict sense is that which is naturally under a person's control, his body with its faculties of movement, feeling, thought, and speech. By extension, a natural right is what a person brings under his control without violating any other person's natural rights.
Frank Van Dun
#33. Some other natural rights ... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights.
Thomas Jefferson
#35. The exercise of natural rights has no limits but such as will ensure their enjoyment to other members of society.
Marquis De Lafayette
#36. The very idea of law originates in men's natural rights. There is no other standard, than natural rights, by which civil law can be measured. Law has always been the name of that rule or principle of justice, which protects those rights. Thus we speak of natural law.
Lysander Spooner
#37. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts.
Jeremy Bentham
#38. The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.
Thomas Jefferson
#39. A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime; whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, or by millions calling themselves a government.
Lysander Spooner
#40. Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
Samuel Adams
#41. [If you understood the natural rights of mankind,] [y]ou would be convinced that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that, and cannot be wrested from any people without the most manifest violation of justice.
Alexander Hamilton
#42. There is no right to a job or a wage rate, but there is a right to move from one country to another in search of a better life. This is the point of view of Thomas Jefferson, John Locke and other great supporters of the natural rights tradition in America.
Alex Tabarrok
#43. The true natural rights of men, then, are equal justice, security of labor and property, the amenities of civilized institutions, and the benefits of orderly society.
Russell Kirk
#44. We resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us.
Walter Scott
#45. The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts - and not absolute and general.
Jiang Zemin
#46. 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
#47. For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights.
David Novak
#48. Liberty is not something a government gives you. It is a right that no government can legally take away.
A.E. Samaan
#49. The proper relation of the Church to the world cannot be deduced from natural law or rational law or from universal human rights, but only from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#50. The electronic spectrum is the only natural resource in which there's no such thing as private property rights. You can't own a piece of the spectrum.
Adrian Cronauer
#51. During times of emergencies, civil crisis, or natural disasters it is important for persons to remain free to exercise their constitutional rights in a lawful and appropriate manner, and I believe it is important that we provide individuals with specific reassurance that we value those rights.
Colleen Hanabusa
#52. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
Robert A. Heinlein
#53. The story of humanity can be written as the struggle to acknowledge all human beings as human beings.
J.S.B. Morse
#54. Liberty, whether natural, civil, or political, is the lawful power in the individual to exercise his corresponding rights. It is greatly favored in law.
Henry Campbell Black
#55. The thing about rights is they're not actually supposed to be voted on. That's why they're called rights.
Rachel Maddow
#56. It is not natural or inevitable that half the world goes hungry; that the freedom of markets trumps protection of the planet; or that citizens' rights come second to those of corporations.
Frances O'Grady
#57. Nor ought we ever to allow any growing power to acquire such a degree of strength as to be able to tear from us, without resistance, our natural, undisputed rights.
Polybius
#58. True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.
Walter E. Williams
#59. Toleration in religion was one of the great rights of man, and a man ought never to be deprived of what was his natural right.
Charles James Fox
#60. Every child born in the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is this new to him as it was to the first that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
Thomas Paine
#61. Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.
Pope Benedict XVI
#62. Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.
Thomas Jefferson
#63. A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.
Thomas Jefferson
#64. Resherphire: True freedom is not that which is granted by an oppressor. It is a self-evident right, not something that originates from an external force.
Angry Zodd
#65. Statism is political fashion.
Individual liberty is eternal.
A.E. Samaan
#66. We have been quick to assume rights to use water but slow to recognize obligations to preserve and protect it ... In short, we need a water ethic-a guide to right conduct in the face of complex decisions about natural systems we do not and cannot fully understand.
Sandra Postel
#67. It is a natural impossibility for any man to make a binding contract, by which he shall surrender to others a single one of what are commonly called his 'natural, inherent, inalienable rights.'
Lysander Spooner
#68. Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.
Thomas Jefferson
#69. Capitalism is not a form of government. Capitalism is a symptom of freedom. It is the result of individual rights, which include property rights.
A.E. Samaan
#70. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
Thomas Paine
#71. And also a lot of Muslims are no more religious then the average Swede. For them it's natural that human rights come first.
Bjorn Ulvaeus
#72. 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
#73. I just want to help other women achieve as much as they can in society without restraints being imposed on us. It's the most natural and normal thing to want to defend your rights to equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and everything that comes with that.
Amy Poehler
#74. Economic dynamism can be combined with environmental and social responsibility. High financial returns can go hand in hand with respect for human rights, and the preservation of the planet's natural resources
David Miliband
#75. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
Garrett Hardin
#76. 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
#77. Knocking on doors wasn't working. We had to try something else. Remember the kids whose natural curiosity brought them into our little office on the corner? We set up a Freedom School that was fashioned after the SNCC Freedom Schools in Mississippi and other places.
Junius Williams
#78. Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.
William Rawle
#79. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
Thomas Jefferson
#80. Harming one's unalienable rights in order to serve justice is injustice.
J.S.B. Morse
#81. The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power ...
Thomas Paine
#82. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Ronald Reagan
#83. It is natural for us to pay attention to North Korea and human rights issues of North Korean defectors but I wish people would not try to create stars. The reality is different from Hollywood movies.
Hark-Joon Lee
#84. 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
#85. True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate.
Marquis De Lafayette
#87. Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, asserted, carried out, and secured by modes of human contrivance.
Gerrit Smith
#88. The more you look back into English history, the more you are forced to the conclusion that alongside civility and the deeply held convictions about individual rights, the English have a natural taste for disorder.
Anna Pavlova
#89. There must be a world revolution which puts an end to all materialistic conditions hindering woman from performing her natural role in life and driving her to carry out man's duties in order to be equal in rights.
Muammar Al-Gaddafi
#90. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate. - MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE
Michelle Moran
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