Quotes About Rights Of Citizens

#1. If the authorities under various false pretenses, continue curtailing the rights of citizens, so that they merely become serfs to a handful of multinational companies, a global rebellion of ordinary people against super capitalism is certainly not inconceivable.

A.J. Beirens

#2. The unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one's thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens and is by no means worthy of favor and support.

Pope Gregory XVI

#3. 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

#4. Romania will always defend the Roma's right to move freely in Europe. They are European citizens and as long as there is no evidence they broke the law they should enjoy the same rights of any European citizen.

Traian Basescu

#5. In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens.

Dick Durbin

#6. 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

#7. The destiny of human rights is in the hands of all our citizens in all our communities.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#8. The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers
a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.

Shirley Chisholm

#9. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America

Paul Robeson

#10. If gay Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break. That is my opinion.

Jeanne Phillips

#11. The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.

John Ashcroft

#12. The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.

Jacques Maritain

#13. In Islam tolerance means that Christians and Jews are allowed to live under the protection of Muslims but never as citizens with the same rights. What Muslims call tolerance is nothing other than discrimination.

Bassam Tibi

#14. We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.

Barbara Boxer

#15. [Ashcroft vowed to] spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag.

John Ashcroft

#16. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a lobby group created by the Church of Scientology that runs the psychiatry museum, maintains that no mental diseases have ever been proven to exist.

Lawrence Wright

#17. All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished. All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection.

James K. Polk

#18. By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

Alexander Hamilton

#19. The question of perpetual copyright is, in my judgement, entitled to the full and favorable consideration of the Congress of an enlightened republic. There would seem to be every reason for the equitable protection, without limit as to time, of the unquestioned property rights of its citizens.

Florence Earle Coates

#20. What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.

Richard Mentor Johnson

#21. In proportion as the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected ruler's increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals.

Paul Lafargue

#22. Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of the United States; its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States, in analogous situations.

Thomas Jefferson

#23. In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.

John Marshall

#24. The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment.

William Jennings Bryan

#25. We are persuaded that good Christians will always be good citizens, and that where righteousness prevails among individuals the Nation will be great and happy. Thus while just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government it's surest support.

George Washington

#26. Let us not forget that the European Community started as a project for peace after the terrible Second World War. And today people take for granted the freedom to travel, to study, to work abroad. And the citizens of one country have almost exactly the same rights as another country.

Jose Manuel Barroso

#27. After a war, the silencing of arms is not enough. Peace means respecting all rights. You can't respect one of them and violate the others. When a society doesn't respect the rights of its citizens, it undermines peace and leads it back to war.

Maria Julia Hernandez

#28. It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.

Rutherford B. Hayes

#29. We need to protect the privacy rights of all Americans, and that means stopping the federal government from spying on the cellphones and emails of law-abiding citizens.

Ted Cruz

#30. The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.

Thomas Jefferson

#31. The entire future of marriage rests with Justice Anthony Kennedy, the man who declared in Citizens United that corporations are people with constitutional rights. I just hope he doesn't do anything rash, like declare that homosexuals are people with constitutional rights.

Stephen Colbert

#32. As a citizen, you have an obligation to the countrys tax system, but you also have an obligation to yourself to know your rights under the law and possible tax deductions
and to claim every one of them.

Donald Alexander

#33. On the whole, it is the rights and freedoms of all citizens that are crucial in Saudi Arabia and from those the rights of women will emanate.

Basmah Bint Saud

#34. LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones, and they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage. I support it personally, and as a matter of policy and law.

Hillary Clinton

#35. India is a vibrant nation whose strength lies in its commitment to equal rights and to speech, religious and economic freedoms that enrich the lives of all citizens. India is not only the world's largest democracy; it is also a secular, pluralistic society committed to inclusive growth.

Henry Paulson

#36. If we're going to change the laws, let's change them in ways which makes it easier to catch criminals, and yet at the same time protect the Second Amendment rights of our law-abiding citizens.

John Dingell

#37. If Cuba wants normal relations, there's certain things they need to do like become a normal country that respects the rights of their citizens.

Marco Rubio

#38. [There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens.

Albert Einstein

#39. If economic progress is not translated into better quality of life and respect for citizens' rights, we will witness more Tahrir Squares in Africa.

Mo Ibrahim

#40. The Good Friday Agreement and the basic rights and entitlements of citizens that are enshrined within it must be defended and actively promoted by London and Dublin.

Gerry Adams

#41. The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

Thomas Jefferson

#42. The social compact sets up among the citizens as equality of such kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#43. Would they not fear that citizens not less tenacious than conscious of their rights would flock from the remotest extremes of their respective states to the places of election, to overthrow their tyrants, and to substitute men who would be disposed to avenge the violated majesty of the people?

Alexander Hamilton

#44. I believe the equal rights amendment is a necessity of life for all citizens. The cabinet sometimes felt that I shouldn't be so outspoken.

Betty Ford

#45. Two soldiers and a villain are enough to blow up the rights of the citizens.

Franz Grillparzer

#46. And to me, that's why the civil rights era is about the future, not about the past, because it's great lessons of how citizens can organize to call on the patriotic heritage of the country to tackle some of our most intractable problems and we need to do that again.

Taylor Branch

#47. Every single day an estimated eighteen million men gratuitously waste the future of our country, by needlessly ejaculating one hundred million citizens of our country, which had they been born, would have made us the strongest country on the planet.

Scott Andrews

#48. Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick ... Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history ... should be rendered ... worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.

Thomas Jefferson

#49. Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#50. The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

Jimmy Carter

#51. 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

#52. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights' . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.

Robert A. Heinlein

#53. I find it poor logic to say that because women are good, women should vote. Men do not vote because they are good; they vote because they are male, and women should vote, not because we are angels and men are animals, but because we are human beings and citizens of this country.

Louisa May Alcott

#54. Think of the undying glory that hangs around the ancient name of Africa and forget not that you are native-born American citizens, and as such, you are justly entitled to all the rights that are granted to the freest.

Henry Highland Garnet

#55. A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#56. The economic, social and cultural progress of a nation depends on citizens counting for more and having more rights.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

#57. The States in which the citizens have enjoyed their rights longest are those in which they make the best use of them.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#58. The Bill of Rights existed long before President Obama was elected, and as long as I'm a U.S. Senator, I will fight to protect the basic rights and liberties that belong to all of us as American citizens.

Rand Paul

#59. Edward Snowden isn't a traitor. He reported the crime of conspiracy to deny citizens of their constitutional rights.

David Chiles

#60. Not slaves," said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. "Citizens, employed by government. They have same rights as other citizens - free speech, freedom of worship, the right to vote. Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now machines control themselves much better.

Anonymous

#61. Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights - that's suppression by any light.

Artur Davis

#62. 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

#63. 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

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

Al Franken

#65. 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

#66. The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble.

Mark Twain

#67. You know what offends me? Offended people. In a country with guaranteed rights to freedom of religion, its citizens are constantly trying to make faith in public spheres illegal, I am offended by that contradiction and want to talk about it as a comic.

Brad Stine

#68. 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

#69. The constitution of Soviet Russia must insure equal rights for all citizens regardless of sex, creed, race, or nationality.

Vladimir Lenin

#70. As we have seen from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's example, even one justice can profoundly alter the meaning of those words for our citizens. Even one justice can deeply affect the rights and liberties of the American people.

Edward Kennedy

#71. The NSA is not looking through people's address books and Visa bills and violating the rights of average citizens. That's not what the NSA does.

Michael Gerson

#72. The stability of the State depends upon the readiness of every citizen to subordinate his rights to those of the rest.

Mahatma Gandhi

#73. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. They are not-in Mississippi. They are not-in Montgomery. That is why I am here today ... You want to shut up every colored person who wants to fight for the rights of his people!.

Paul Robeson

#74. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally.

Patrick Pearse

#75. As a sign of utmost gratitude for his contributions to the Indian society in restoring equal rights of the citizens, I confer him (B.R. Ambedkar) the title "Martin Luther King Jr. of India.

Abhijit Naskar

#76. 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

#77. The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.

H.L. Mencken

#78. I think in short order all of us need to act like we are citizens with not only rights, but also duties.

Cecily McMillan

#79. A country which does not respect the rights of its own citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbours

Andrei Sakharov

#80. Every selfish motive therefore, every family attachment, ought to recommend such a system of policy as would provide no less carefully for the rights and happiness of the lowest than of the highest orders of Citizens.

George Mason

#81. Well, again, a gun sale database is just trying to get the Department of Justice to keep track of the guns that they're purchasing and supplying to drug dealers and murderers. I mean, wow. Come on, let's get the government under control before we start restricting the rights of - innocent citizens.

John Mica

#82. In 'Citizens United v. FEC', the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the federal campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold imposed unconstitutional restrictions on the First Amendment rights of corporations.

Eric Schneiderman

#83. Fundamentalists tell us to fear the specter of special rights for gay citizens, though of course gay Americans aren't after special rights - merely equal rights. The irony is that special rights actually do exist in this country-for religious groups.

Sean Faircloth

#84. The source of the government's authority is "the consent of the governed." This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

Ayn Rand

#85. The kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies.

Alexander Hamilton

#86. Most human-rights activists sincerely believe in the existence of human rights. No one was lying when, in 2011, the UN demanded that the Libyan government respect the human rights of its citizens, even though the UN, Libya and human rights are all figments of our fertile imaginations. Ever

Yuval Noah Harari

#87. Let me say with a Georgia accent that we cannot solve this problem if it requires a diplomatic passport to claim the rights of an American citizen.

Dean Rusk

#88. The bill neither confers nor abridges the rights of anyone but simply declares that in civil rights there shall be equality among all classes of citizens and that all alike shall be subject to the same punishment.

Lyman Trumbull

#89. Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

David Cameron

#90. I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#91. A number of laws that are said to protect citizens harkens back to "Jim Crow" era.

J.C. Phillips

#92. She [Justice sandra Day O'Connor] wrote - and this is one we should all remember - she wrote that even war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens. She held that even this president is not above the law.

Patrick Leahy

#93. For the first 200 years of our nation's history, corporations were never defined by the courts as persons with free speech rights under the First Amendment. Only in recent years have we witnessed this corporate takeover of our First Amendment, culminating in the Citizens United ruling.

John Bonifaz

#94. I believe that the power to declare war is most important in limiting the powers of the national government in regard to the rights of its citizens, but that it does not require Congress to give its approval before the president uses force abroad.

John Yoo

#95. It is astonishing that gay and lesbian Americans are still treated as second-class citizens. I am confident that, very soon, the laws of this nation will reflect the basic truth that gay and lesbian people - like all human beings - are born equal in dignity and rights.

George Clooney

#96. We are a nation of immigrants, a quilt of many colors, and we've managed over more than two centuries to create a way of life that allows for a reasonable degree of upward mobility, that prizes individual liberty, promotes freedom of religion and genuinely values equal rights for all citizens.

Jay Parini

#97. If children do not understand the Constitution, they cannot understand how our government functions, or what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the United States.

John Roberts

#98. We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended.

Harry Belafonte

#99. I urge the citizens of Ferguson who have been peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters, vandals and others seeking to inflame tensions and sow discord.

Eric Holder

#100. I'm a libertarian-conservative. I believe the state should focus on defending lives, rights, and property instead of depriving its citizens of their God-given liberties.

Todd Young