Quotes About Rights Of The Individual

#1. We don't need a weakened government but a strong government that would take responsibility for the rights of the individual and care for the society as a whole.

Vladimir Putin

#2. The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments.

Mercy Otis Warren

#3. Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Thomas Jefferson

#4. My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state.

Jim Garrison

#5. The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent and sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious origin.

George Jellinek

#6. Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

Jalal Talabani

#7. The government's only functions are to protect the rights of the individual; therefore, you need a police force and an army.

Neil Peart

#8. The whole of the Bill is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals ... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

Albert Gallatin

#9. The rights of the individual are greatly prized in the developed world, but in many other regions they are considered a luxury reserved for the impossibly wealthy.

Silvia Cartwright

#10. Dictatorship of the majority over the minority would be an encroachment on the rights of the individual and their prerogative to personal freedom.

Newton Lee

#11. Love transgresses the possibility of the rights of the individual becoming only selfish indulgence. For love, we will accept a person's faults and pain, and take them on as our own.

Rod Dubey

#12. America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

John Podhoretz

#13. Government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.

Lyn Nofziger

#14. [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

#15. It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress.

Bill Sali

#16. The West has given us the liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction.

Ibn Warraq

#17. 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

#18. I became a Libertarian as a result of researching WWII and the Holocaust. Individual liberty is sacred.

A.E. Samaan

#19. 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

#20. Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.

Ayn Rand

#21. [In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.

James Madison

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. We need to insist on fathers and mothers sharing the care of their offspring as well as the opportunity to enjoy the fulfillment of individual rights.

Mary Frances Berry

#25. Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers.

John Ashcroft

#26. Regulated" rights are not rights. They are niceties and platitudes intended to keep the populace thinking their individual autonomy is respected by their government.

A.E. Samaan

#27. I think it is very important for any U.S. administration to be clear that America stands on the side of freedom and democracy and respect for individual rights.

Stephen Hadley

#28. The ideal of perfect Success is an ideal belonging to the same sort of individual as the inventor of Equal Rights of man and Perfectibility.

Wyndham Lewis

#29. One of the greatest perils to an extensive republic is the disregard of individual rights.

Calvin Coolidge

#30. Historically, the court has been the forum to which individuals can turn when they believed their constitutional rights were violated. This has been especially noteworthy in the arena of civil rights.

Dianne Feinstein

#31. As the guardian of our rights, the Supreme Court makes decisions every year which either protect the individual or leave him at the mercy of more powerful forces in our society.

Herb Kohl

#32. We talk about democracy as if it's a safeguard for individual rights ... Instead, it's become our way of intruding on rights, allegedly in the name of that most collectivist of concepts: The Common Good.

Jonathan D. Morris

#33. 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

#34. We must always embrace individual liberty and enforce the constitutional rights of all Americans-rich and poor, immigrant and native, black and white.

Rand Paul

#35. Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.

William Jennings Bryan

#36. Coercive redistribution of wealth through government's abuse of law and misapplication of rights destroys individual liberty; ambition, productivity, and wealth; and the purpose of the commonwealth.

Mark R. Levin

#37. The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.

Gerry Spence

#38. The protection of human rights to promote the dignity of the individual is too important a matter for symbolic gestures alone. It is only through the pursuit of practical and effective efforts to promote human rights that we show our real commitment to the welfare of individuals and society.

Alexander Downer

#39. Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

Thomas Jefferson

#40. I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.

Penn Jillette

#41. A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization.

Matthew Woodring Stover

#42. 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

#43. The government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

Antonin Scalia

#44. Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)
As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57

Orit Badouk Epstein

#45. The duties I ask of myself are obligatory for absolutely every individual, everywhere. Moreover, just as I recognize these rights and duties of others, I would like the others to recognize them form me as well.

Ameen Rihani

#46. Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships.

Ayn Rand

#47. The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#48. One thing I fear, that you Americans will do the same thing that you did after the last war. I mean that you will pull out of here and leave Europe, then Russia will have her way. Private enterprise and individual rights will be lost just as much as under a Nazi government. Frightful!

Hjalmar Schacht

#49. Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly "free" state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot.

Tiffany Madison

#50. The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#51. I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#52. He was a lifelong Republican, but over the years, Harry Blackmun built a reputation as a liberal, sometimes defiant Justice, whose fierce protection of individual rights led some to anoint him the moral conscience of the court.

Judy Woodruff

#53. The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.

Ron Paul

#54. America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.

Ayn Rand

#55. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Ayn Rand

#56. By contrast, if one conceives the idea of human rights as centring on the notion that each individual is completely autonomous and should have entire control over its own fate, this seems to me unrealistic even for human beings, and far too one-sided to be used as a central tool of morality.

Mary Midgley

#57. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it's supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals.

Ron Paul

#58. The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Thomas Jefferson

#59. A basic component of individual rights is the right to own property.

Russell Shorto

#60. That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust.

Robert Byrd

#61. 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

#62. A privileging of individual rights over group goods can lead to serious problems, as we've seen with the antivaccination movement.

Emily Matchar

#63. Striking a balance in favor of individual rights has always been the right decision for us and that it remains so even when technology gives us new ways to exercise those rights. Individual liberty has never weakened us; freedom of speech, enhanced by the Net, will only make us stronger.

Mike Godwin

#64. Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn't just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress.

Helen Clark

#65. 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

#66. One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Ganhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.

Jack Canfield

#67. My belief has always been ... that wherever in this land any individual's constitutional rights are being unjustly denied, it is the obligation of the federal government-at point of bayonet if necessary-to restore that individual's constitutional rights

Ronald Reagan

#68. Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public health,' 'public good,' 'public welfare,' and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.

Lysander Spooner

#69. Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual ... Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.

John Hancock

#70. The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.

William Blackstone

#71. Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society.

Lawrence Kohlberg

#72. 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

#73. The very inclusion of the right to keep and bear arms in the Bill of Rights shows that the framers of the Constitution considered it an individual right.

Samuel Ray Cummings

#74. The individual who refuses to defend his rights when called by his government deserves to be a slave, and must be punished as an enemy of his country and a friend to her foe

Andrew Jackson

#75. 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

#76. Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned

Ayn Rand

#77. 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

#78. We must look to an open, tolerant, inclusive England, which embraces the values of a Britain that still leads the world in terms of an open democracy, as well as an understanding of the needs for responsibilities and obligations to run alongside the affirmation of individual rights.

David Blunkett

#79. We [Latinos] must be proud. We have the same rights in the U.S. as anybody else. Instead of crying and getting upset about visa problems and having our families come join us, go fight for your rights. Make yourself a productive individual in the society.

Patricia Velasquez

#80. Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings ... their importance, their dignity ... and agreed that was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#81. What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.

Thomas Jefferson

#82. Those who treat the muslim woman not as an individual but as a symbol either of Islamic chastity or secular liberalism are guilty of the same sin : the objectification of women

Reza Aslan

#83. Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual.

Auberon Herbert

#84. I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.

Abraham Lincoln

#85. Laws are the very bulkwarks of liberty; they define every man's rights, and defend the individual liberties of all men.

J.G. Holland

#86. Any successful nominee should possess both the temperament to interpret the law and the wisdom to do so fairly. The next Supreme Court Justice should have a record of protecting individual rights and a strong willingness to put aside any political agenda.

Bennie Thompson

#87. If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

Ilana Mercer

#88. If succeeding generations of Americans don't understand the concepts of justice, individual rights, free enterprise, capitalism, sovereignty or national security, there can be no guarantee that those concepts - or others like them - will continue.

George Nethercutt

#89. Individual and national rights to wealth rest on the basis of civil and international law, or at least of custom that has the force of law.

Alfred Marshall

#90. Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by 'sophisticated' methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

Noam Chomsky

#91. The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights ...

Ayn Rand

#92. China has no choice but to emulate the power of America's founding ideas and its journey through the universal values of democratic freedom and individual rights.

Patrick Mendis

#93. Social justice is collectivism. Social justice is the rights of a group. It denies individual responsibility. It's a negation of individual responsibility, so social justice is totally contrary to the Word of God.

Ted Cruz

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

Dick Durbin

#95. Make ethical choices in what we buy, do, and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws.

Marc Bekoff

#96. Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights"? is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights"? is a contradiction in terms.

Ayn Rand

#97. The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.

Steven Pinker

#98. The one thing man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by a World Government, a New World Order.

Henry A. Kissinger

#99. The psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind.

Terence McKenna

#100. The government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.

Thurgood Marshall