Quotes About Our Natural Rights

#1. Our natural rights come from an authority beyond the petty rule of man.

Bryant McGill

#2. 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

#3. We resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us.

Walter Scott

#4. A human being has no natural rights of any nature.

Robert A. Heinlein

#5. 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

#6. The exercise of natural rights has no limits but such as will ensure their enjoyment to other members of society.

Marquis De Lafayette

#7. 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

#8. Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts.

Jeremy Bentham

#12. 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

#13. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate. - MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE

Michelle Moran

#14. The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.

Thomas Jefferson

#15. 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

#16. Harming one's unalienable rights in order to serve justice is injustice.

J.S.B. Morse

#17. 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

#18. [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

#19. 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

#20. The thing about rights is they're not actually supposed to be voted on. That's why they're called rights.

Rachel Maddow

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. [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

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.

Thomas Jefferson

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.

Thomas Jefferson

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

Garrett Hardin

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. Some other natural rights ... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights.

Thomas Jefferson

#45. 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

#46. Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

Thomas Jefferson

#47. 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

#48. To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.

Carl L. Becker

#49. 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

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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