Top 100 Quotes About Rights
#1. If we can't be cordial to these creatures' fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze.
Marianne Moore
#2. What gets lost is that the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights.
Rand Paul
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.
Edmund Burke
#7. To me, a feminist belongs in the same category as a humanist or an advocate for human rights. I don't see why someone who's a feminist should be thought of differently.
Suzanne Vega
#8. My own country's record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect.
Hillary Clinton
#9. The West has given us the liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction.
Ibn Warraq
#10. I swear I will do everything in my power to change the situation in Tibet where human rights are being suppressed. Tibet seeks freedom and democracy and we agree on those values.
Shinzo Abe
#11. Marching with over a million women in support of our reproductive rights was one of the most empowering things I have done, both as a woman and as a Member of Congress.
Sheila Jackson Lee
#12. While new rights are attributed to or indeed almost presumed by the individual, life is not always protected as the primary value and the primordial right of every human being. The ultimate aim of medicine remains the defence and promotion of life.
Pope Francis
#13. Freedom of the press, the surest guaranty of the rights of man.
Sarah Vowell
#14. minority groups too often demand equal rights they haven't earned,
Anonymous
#15. Government of limited power need not be anemic government. Assurance that rights are secure tends to diminish fear and jealousy of strong government, and by making us feel safe to live under it makes for its better support.
Robert H. Jackson
#16. Are gun rights advocates arguing that roving gangs ... shooting innocent bystanders constitutes a 'well-regulated militia'?
Bill Hicks
#17. 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
#18. Stand up to your rights to protect your integrity.
Emily Bilman
#20. I hear myself saying these words: What this movement is about is options. I say it to friends who are frustrated, or housebound, or guilty, or child-laden, and what I'm really thinking is, If you really got it together, the option you would choose is mine.
Nora Ephron
#21. The bottom line is that we cannot sit idle as unparalleled rules and regulations significantly restrict our rights and ability to care for our families.
Alan Wilson
#22. Because they have shamefully trampled underfoot the grace of God, they have forfeited all rights to compassion.
Daniel I. Block
#23. I became a Libertarian as a result of researching WWII and the Holocaust. Individual liberty is sacred.
A.E. Samaan
#24. Why do we go to all this trouble' Parker asked. 'Men don't notice anyway.'
'Because what we wear affects how we feel, how we act, how we move. And that they do notice. Especially the move. Get dressed, smoke the eyes. You'll know you look good so you'll feel good. You'll have a better time.
Nora Roberts
#25. If you help others with sincere motivation and sincere concern, that will bring you more fortune, more friends, more smiles, and more success. If you forget about others' rights and neglect others' welfare, ultimately you will be very lonely.
Dalai Lama
#26. Many civil rights came about, not when they were passed into law, but because the federal government did what it should and saw them enforced.
Claire McCaskill
#27. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When
Yuval Noah Harari
#28. If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as 'human rights'? How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
Carl Sagan
#29. Obama wanted to offer his support to birth control activist Sandra Fluke. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy.
Jay Carney
#30. I am an adamant feminist. It never occurred to me to take my husband's name when we married. I am a supporter of abortion rights, of equal pay for equal work, of the rights of women prisoners, of all the time-honored feminist causes, and then some.
Ayelet Waldman
#31. Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.
Michael N. Castle
#32. Pedestrian's rights - because we live in California, I've got to address this issue. I don't know where on the fence I am about that. I suppose if I'm walking, I'm all for it, but if I'm driving, that's a whole other can of worms.
Janeane Garofalo
#33. I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.
Harry Browne
#34. 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
#35. We don't "crave" animal-based meat, dairy, and eggs, but we do crave fat, salt, flavor, texture, and familiarity.
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
#36. Whatever a man imagines he can attain, if he doesn't become too arrogant and encroach on the rights of the gods.
Charles Lindbergh
#37. If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Ayn Rand
#38. If you believe in resurrection, you believe that the living God will put his world to rights and that if God wants to do that in the future, it is right to try to anticipate that by whatever means in the present.
N. T. Wright
#39. People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others.
Ron Paul
#40. The UN Commission on Human Rights, whose membership in recent years has included countries - such as Libya and Sudan - which have deplorable human rights records, and the recent Oil-for-Food scandal, are just a few examples of why reform is so imperative.
John Linder
#41. The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#42. And therefore, for the sake of my mater, without any regard for my own, I hope all those that have a due regard for our constitution and for the rights and prerogatives of the crown, without which our constitution can not be preserved, will be against this motion.
Robert Walpole
#43. It is because the human experience is universal that human rights are universal.
Hillary Clinton
#44. Most governments in Latin America have failed to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their right to their own traditional territories.
Bianca Jagger
#45. For those 10 months back in Afghanistan after university, I felt I had no rights. It felt like I didn't exist. It was like I was their doll, and I was lost, somehow. My sister's husband brought me to an art gallery. It had a big effect on me.
Malina Suliman
#46. 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
#47. I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
Abraham Lincoln
#48. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins. Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
#49. The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.
George Washington
#50. The problem with being a gun rights supporter is that the left hates guns and the right hates rights.
Gene Hoffman
#51. The pursuit of universal rights requires more than speeches. It requires power.
George Friedman
#52. There was no miracle that night ...
Ed King
#53. The Easter egg which was not found
contained a letter from the hen who laid it,
saying Fuck your kids,
What about mine?
Shay Caroline
#54. For a consumer society thrives by stoking unquenchable desires into unsustainable cravings and fanning them with an inflated rage for rights. The restlessness it creates by providing false satisfactions and deadening true desires simultaneously fuels the economy and destroys happiness.
Os Guinness
#55. It must be instilled in man that 'peace' is the best legacy we would leave behind for the generations to come, as we practice and follow the edicts of human rights.
Henrietta Newton Martin
#56. For nearly as long as civilization has existed, patriarchy - enforced through the rights of the firstborn son - has been the organizing principle, with few exceptions.
Hanna Rosin
#57. Life is a perspective and for me, if a human being has access to school, clean water, food, proper health care, that is the basis of human rights.
Gelila Bekele
#58. 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
#59. Gratitude is a sign of maturity ... Where there is appreciation: there is also courtesy and concern for the rights and property of others.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#60. 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
#61. Low-income taxpayers deserve the same rights as everyone else. It was wrong of the IRS to target low-income taxpayers, and I am please by the decision to correct this unfair practice.
Christopher Dodd
#62. Every year Swedish society produces a new generation of threatened women who can testify to the lack of legal rights and the lukewarm interest shown by the police and other authorities.
Stieg Larsson
#63. Life is a balancing act. While we have all the rights to be in freedom, peace, harmony and bliss; we do have a responsibility to ensure that others too enjoy their own freedom, peace, harmony and bliss.
Vishwas Chavan
#64. Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.
John Charles Polanyi
#65. Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant.
Ron Paul
#66. If a country doesn't recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.
Hillary Clinton
#67. When it comes to fighting for your rights don't fold hands but turn them into fists.
Amit Abraham
#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. One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate.
Alice Walker
#70. Too often, advances in civil rights or women's rights are undermined by wrong-headed legislation or weak-kneed political leadership.
Mike Quigley
#71. Everyone should feel comfortable they are going to remain in their homes until their dying days. We should never be uneasy or unsure of where our home is in the United States of America.
Tit Elingtin
#72. Families cannot prosper and keep America strong if government becomes a Goliath that preys upon their wealth, usurps their rights, and crushes their spirit.
Ronald Reagan
#73. I love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They're always misunderstood, but they're the ones who are standing up for human rights.
Richard Hatch
#74. Until we align our minds with our souls,
we will continue to grieve for our highest selves as individuals, a society, and as a world family.
Leta B.
#75. If Islam's sole interest is the welfare of mankind, then Islam is the strongest advocate of human rights anywhere on Earth.
Mos Def
#76. It is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of all constitutions, bills of rights and laws. This is the meaning of all struggles which men have fought for liberty.
Ludwig Von Mises
#77. The choices that women make have huge impact on families, on communities and on nations. Being able to provide an enabling environment for them to exercise their rights and make choices in their lives is crucial. It is at the heart of human development!
Babatunde Osotimehin
#78. I insist that people - wherever they live - have their rights and they must be able to fight for them.
Vladimir Putin
#79. FGM breaches all human rights and has no place in any 21st century society.
Waris Dirie
#80. My interest is not data, it's the world. And part of world development you can see in numbers. Others, like human rights, empowerment of women, it's very difficult to measure in numbers.
Hans Rosling
#81. The only solution to the issue of human rights is oblivion.
Augusto Pinochet
#82. Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap.
Helen Keller
#83. I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.
Jed S. Rakoff
#84. I want to work on respecting individuals' dignity. Equal rights, that's where my heart is. That means equal rights and benefits, and that's what we need.
Christine Gregoire
#85. We believe in equality for all, and privileges for none. This is a belief that each American regardless of background has equal standing in the public forum, all of us. Because we believe this idea so firmly, we are an inclusive, rather than an exclusive party. Let everybody come.
Barbara Jordan
#86. 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
#87. It's long been common practice among many to draw a distinction between "human rights" and "property rights," suggesting that the two are separate and unequal - with "property rights" second to "human rights."
Richard M. Nixon
#88. ...the most sacred right of a person is to refuse o be manipulated, handled, cheated, and then kicked in the ass---.
Romain Gary
#89. The world must know that America holds to the highest standards of military conduct and human rights protections. Anything less is unacceptable.
Barbara Mikulski
#91. If you look at attitudes today and where they are headed, it's clear to me that supporting equal rights, including the rights to civil marriage, is a net positive for winning elections, as well as the right thing to do.
Ken Mehlman
#92. It's going to be very important that we as women's rights advocates are involved in redistricting of both the states legislatures and of the House of Representatives and that we not lose seats but we gain seats for talented women and our country, but we're lacking behind.
Eleanor Smeal
#93. 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
#94. To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws.
Nataly Kelly
#95. The concept of justice I take to be defined, then, by the role of its principles in assigning rights and duties and in defining the appropriate division of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation of this role.
John Rawls
#96. A lion is not a lion if it is only free to eat, to sleep and to copulate. It deserves to be free to hunt and to choose its own prey; to look for and find its own mate; to fight for and hold its own territory; and to die where it was born - in the wild. It should have the same rights as we have.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
#97. Of course, freedom is not free. Taxpayers pay for it.
Zarina Bibi
#98. Unfortunately, we don't have the option of marriage in our country. We could go to Britain or Spain or Argentina and do something symbolic, but that's not what I want. I want to have the rights of anybody else in my home country. I don't want to be a second-class citizen
Dick Cheney
#99. The world is in need of an encompassing and of course, just and humane order in the light of which the rights of all are preserved and peace and security are safeguarded.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
#100. Politicians show no signs of even knowing the difference between negative and positive rights. Blinded by the dazzle of anything that makes them popular, they honestly may not be able to tell.
P. J. O'Rourke
