Top 100 Quotes About Political Rights
#1. It is not necessary to dwell on the political and social principles of Islam, to underline how close they also are in spirit to the concepts of human rights which govern the political and social systems of the West.
Aly Khan
#2. The very purpose of a bill of rights is to withdraw certain subjects from ... political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities.
Robert H. Jackson
#3. Too often, advances in civil rights or women's rights are undermined by wrong-headed legislation or weak-kneed political leadership.
Mike Quigley
#4. 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
#5. The Arab representatives and their followers were not interested in the persecuted millions throughout the world; they were fixed on a political agenda that distracted the world from their own serious shortcomings in the human-rights department.
Jack Schwartz
#6. Abortion doesn't belong in the political arena. It's a private right, like many other rights concerning the family.
Bella Abzug
#7. When you have an organization that's neither political nor religious and doesn't take part in the civil rights struggle, what can it call itself? It's in a vacuum.
Malcolm X
#8. Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.
Nelson Mandela
#9. [R]ights do not belong to men simply as men, but because of the superior qualities, physical, intellectual, moral or political, which are characteristic of certain individuals or races.
Charles Edward Merriam
#10. When people believe that the local government and economy serve their needs. There is little desire to protest.
Auliq Ice
#11. 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
#12. Man is Nature's most wonderful creature. Torturing him, crushing him, murdering him for his beliefs and ideas is more than a violation of human rights-it is a crime against all humanity.
Armando Valladares
#13. When it came to political power, blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights, and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.
Andrea Mitchell
#14. As the prevailing voices in the public spotlight are predominantly men, stepping into the spotlight with the truth of who you are as a woman is political change.
Tabby Biddle
#15. [Rosa Louise] Parks used to say, "Everybody looks at me because I sat down once in Montgomery, but the real hero is a woman named Septima Clark."She created the Citizenship Schools [where civil-rights activists taught basic literacy and political education classes].
Marian Wright Edelman
#16. Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.
Ezra Taft Benson
#17. Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity. Even in times of real danger, political authorities have to prove the case that abridgments of rights are justified.
Michael Ignatieff
#18. It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#19. Progressivism is an active channel for social equity, social liberalism, and political rights for all people.
Henry Johnson Jr
#20. Individual rights always go along with the interests of the society. I want to add that in Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.
Nong Duc Manh
#21. Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
James F. Cooper
#22. I wasn't political enough to write articles about myself or go to cocktail parties, meaning that not only has my art been pirated and my intellectual property rights stolen, but my work has been misrepresented.
Michael Heizer
#23. 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
#24. I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.
Bram Cohen
#25. Mr. President: We, women political prisoners of the Soviet Union, congratulate you on your reelection to the spot of President of the USA. We look with hope to your country which is on the road of FREEDOM and respect for HUMAN RIGHTS. We wish you success on this road.
Ronald Reagan
#26. Lawyers should not be charged with the same crimes as their clients. Trials related to political charges are not in accordance with human rights.
Shirin Ebadi
#27. The freedom to bear arms may be righteously rejected to encourage the preservation of all corporeal forms of life.
Kevin Alan Lee
#28. Whether I am or am not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.
Paul Robeson
#29. Political solutions-accountable to the people and enforceable by their elected representatives- deserve another shot before we throw in the towel and settle for corporate codes, independent monitors and the privatisation of our collective rights as citizens.
Naomi Klein
#30. It is not so much freedom of speech but the right to truth that great men protect.
Criss Jami
#31. No matter how little we think anatomy should matter to one's social and political rights, surely we can't pretend biology doesn't matter in sports. Surely there's a reason we don't let adults play in the t-ball leagues, and a reason most women athletes want their own leagues.
Alice Dreger
#32. In fairness, Latin America's elected civilian leaders have made progress in some areas. They have brought their countries back to international respectability, curbed flagrant human rights violations, and sought to build democratic political institutions.
Stephen Kinzer
#33. The basic gamut of civil and political rights in terms of disappearances, detainees, people who are surrendered, what happened the missing. Any talk about allegations of war crimes. Those are the kind of thing that lead to a great deal of fear and uncertainty.
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
#34. And it's absolutely hypocritical for the political party that talks about states rights, to suddenly ignore states rights, that say that the federal government or federalism has no business in this kind of business.
Gary Ackerman
#35. We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.
Frederick Douglass
#36. We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system.
William O. Douglas
#37. The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights.
Herbert Croly
#39. I recall Ghandi said ultimately all things devolve into the political, but I'd argue that all things devolve into pro-people and anti-people. And I can pose the question, which side are you on?
Stetson Kennedy
#40. If you truly care about animal rights and have a passion for it, take some action. Whether it's hands-on or political, just go for it. No matter what path you choose in life or what you decide to do, you can use your voice to educate other people and help the cause.
Mac Danzig
#41. Without the means to prevent, and to control the timing of, conception, economic and political rights have limited meaning for women. If women cannot plan their pregnancies, they can plan little else in their lives ...
Alice S. Rossi
#42. We must respect each other's right to choose a collective destiny, and the opportunity to develop the legal and political rights for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples so that we may enjoy the right to maintain our culture, our heritage and our land, as a united Australia.
Jackie Huggins
#43. Really, when it comes to gay rights, there's two wars going on. The first war is political. But the culture war is over.
Dan Savage
#44. I will help the good fight continue until that long awaited moment arrives, when our rights are equal and when the political limits on love have been smashed.
Anne Hathaway
#45. We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.
Susan B. Anthony
#46. What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that's the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand.
Tony Blair
#47. Population growth is straining the Earth's resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights.
Al Gore
#48. The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.
Booker T. Washington
#49. This political line is wholly neo-Soviet: human beings do not have independent existences, they are cogs in the machine whose function is to implement unquestioningly whatever political escapades those in power dream up. Cogs have no rights. Not even to dignity in death.
Anna Politkovskaya
#50. It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.
Marian Wright Edelman
#51. We [The United States] believe the Iranian people want a future of freedom and human rights: the right to vote, to run for office, to express their views without fear and to pursue political causes. We would welcome the progress, prosperity and freedom of the Iranian people.
Condoleezza Rice
#52. Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.
Glenn Greenwald
#53. We must ask the high cadres ... When you suppressed the rights of others to express freely their political views, did you secure your own?
Wei Jingsheng
#54. The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent and sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious origin.
George Jellinek
#55. The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#56. People, regardless of political views, matter in this state and in this country and in this world. And, you know, when people attack people's basic rights and livelihoods, I'm concerned about it. And as a citizen of Queensland and nothing else, I've got the right to express my view.
Clive Palmer
#57. In 'The General Strike,' we celebrate those who bring a new vision for the world to the table. People who stand for workers rights, human rights, a just representative political system, and a new mode of doing business where sustainability is the norm not the exception.
Justin Sane
#58. Judicial excellence means that a Supreme Court justice must have a sense of the values from which our core of our political- economic system goes. In other words, we should not approve any nominee whose extreme judicial philosophy would undermine rights and liberties relied upon by all Americans.
Herb Kohl
#59. 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
#60. Republican patience with how unionism deals with the political institutions, and with key issues like equality and human rights, will be tested because, obviously, there will be a battle a day on these matters. So lets face up to all of this with our eyes wide open.
Gerry Adams
#61. The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important 'cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.
Al Franken
#62. The implementation measures of both Covenants, but especially those of the Covenant concerning civil and political rights, were considerably weakened to the point where they assumed an optional character.
Rene Cassin
#63. Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences in power, property, and education.
Max Scheler
#64. For a successful revolution it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a profound and thorough conviction of the justice, necessity and importance of political and social rights.
B.R. Ambedkar
#65. While American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#66. Human Rights Watch wants Rwandans to be able to speak freely about their ethnic hatreds, and to allow political parties connected with the defeated genocide army to campaign freely for power.
Stephen Kinzer
#67. In Finland we have equal political rights for women and men. We do not regard ourselves according to sex.
Harri Holkeri
#68. Minorities have never been given their rights. They have always had to wage a political and legal battle to win them.
Gloria Allred
#69. Freedom ... Freedom does not exist with personal responsibility!
Joseph P. Sekula
#70. For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp.
Joe Klein
#71. For about ten years now, the struggle for democracy and the respect of human rights has been in the focus point - if not a commodity - of political groups aiming to rise to power.
Omar Bongo
#72. I believe that feminism has become a political movement that seeks to obtain unlimited rights for woman without corresponding responsibilities via the suppression of feminism.Under my definition, helping oppressed women in other countries falls outside the scope of the movement's interests.
Mike Adams
#73. Human security comes only with human rights and the rule of law. Human rights are the basis for creating strong and accountable states without which there can be no political stability or social progress.
Irene Khan
#74. Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#75. Yes. My mother was and still is a Folk Singer. She was very involved in the political movements for Unions and Civil rights. She sang with Pete Seeger among others. My father was an Actor.
Vicki Sue Robinson
#76. Of course, political leaders are much more ambitious than gangsters. The latter are content to take your money, whereas the former, besides taking far more of your money, have the effrontery to violate your just rights whenever their convenience dictates ...
Robert Higgs
#77. There wasn't a question of what compromise there should be or what kind of peace process we should engage in. There was only one discussion: How do we remove the colonial power that is occupying our
country?
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh
#78. Angela Davis's legacy as a freedom fighter made her an enemy of the state under the increasingly neoliberal regimes of Nixon, Reagan and J. Edgar Hoover because she understood that the struggle for freedom was not only a struggle for political and individual rights but also for economic rights.
Henry Giroux
#79. John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.
Russell Banks
#80. In the new century, we should continue to work together to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the vast number of developing countries including China and India and promote the establishment of a just and equitable new international political and economic order.
Li Peng
#81. Now I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; every citizen must be put in possession of his rights, or rights must be granted to no one.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#82. As in Pakistan, Tunisian and Egyptian human rights activists are concerned that any censorship mechanisms, once put in place, will inevitably be abused for political purposes no matter what censorship proponents claim to the contrary.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#83. Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
Ambrose Bierce
#84. I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be part of that.
Edward Snowden
#85. 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
#86. The rights of one sex, political and otherwise, are the same as those of the other sex, and this equality of rights ought to be fully recognized.
Leland Stanford
#87. It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights Movement and the artistic revolution that was becoming a part of jazz.
Archie Shepp
#88. As soon as the economic freedom which the market economy grants to its members is removed, all political liberties and bills of rights become humbug.
Ludwig Von Mises
#89. Chomsky also reveals how neoliberalism is hardly a new thing, but merely the current version of the battle for the wealthy few to circumscribe the political rights and civic powers of the many. Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
#90. We seek in Central America not peace alone, not peace to be followed someday by political progress, but peace and democracy, together, indivisible, an end to the shedding of human blood, which is inseparable from an end to the suppression of human rights.
Oscar Arias
#91. Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.
Naomi Klein
#92. The political Right likes to champion individual rights and individual liberty, but it has also worked to enforce morality in relation to abortion, gambling, and homosexuality.
Dave Brat
#93. Iran's continued, widespread persecution of ethnic minorities, human rights defenders and political prisoners is a disgrace and stands as a shameful indictment of Iran's leaders.
William Hague
#94. Even in South Carolina, as badly as we did, and we did very badly, we won the votes of people 29 years of age or younger. The future of the Democratic Party, the future of this country is involving young people in the political process, getting them to stand up for their rights.
Bernie Sanders
#95. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote. A majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority. The political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities, and the smallest minority on earth is the individual.
Ayn Rand
#96. A political prisoner is someone who is out fighting for his or her people's rights and freedom and is imprisoned for that alone.
Leonard Peltier
#97. The right to unite freely and to separate freely is the first and most important of all political rights.
Mikhail Bakunin
#98. Gay Marriage isn't Special Rights, it's Equal Rights. 'Special Rights' are for political churches that don't pay taxes.
John Fugelsang
#99. I have found, in over fifty years of confronting governments and defending cooperatives from political and bureaucratic interference, that when you begin demanding what is rightfully yours, there are many people even within the bureaucratic system who ensure that you retain those rights.
Verghese Kurien
#100. Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
John Legend
