Top 100 Quotes About Rights
#1. The Edmund Pettus Bridge - which in 2013 was declared a National Historic Landmark - isn't symbolic of the Civil War in a meaningful way. It is, however, the modern-day battlefield where the voting rights movement was born.
Douglas Brinkley
#2. I told her how frustrating it is to be a Christian in America, and how frustrated I am with not only the church's failures concerning human rights, but also my personal failure to contribute to the solution.
Donald Miller
#3. It does not matter what country we live in, who our leaders are, or even who we are. Because we are human, we therefore have rights. And because we have rights, governments are bound to protect them.
Hillary Clinton
#4. A man of peace shall always live in peace, if all chances are given and only shall he stand to fight for his rights if peace and freedom isn't granted to him.
Auliq Ice
#5. Where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread ...
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#6. But we must create in each person a sense of responsibility in order that each one of us can have the right to enjoy all his rights.
Federica Montseny
#7. We're losing our way as a society. If we don't stand up, if we don't say what we think those rights should be, and if we don't protect them, we will very soon find out that we do not have them.
Edward Snowden
#8. Justice is only what a "culture," meaning a shifting majority of people, say it is, with a dollop of respect for "human rights" spread on top, without intellectual foundation, and without any connection with virtue and duty.
Anthony Esolen
#9. Gentlemen respect the rights of others. They are honorable men.
Ellen J. Barrier
#10. Did you know that we are the only people in the United States who have to have their voting rights okayed every couple of years?
Whoopi Goldberg
#11. The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.
Eugene V. Debs
#12. Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it.
Dick Gregory
#13. I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.
Al Franken
#14. We're taking on Social Security as a property rights issue. We figure that every single American has an absolute property right interest in the fruits of his or her own labor. What I work for should be my property.
Malcolm Wallop
#15. People have the absolute right to preach and to think and to say whatever they believe, and at the same time those beliefs can't be used as the basis for denying other people their equal rights and their equal freedom.
Chris Christie
#16. I wish I had a man and not a dishrag printed over with big words like 'constitutional rights' and 'progress'!
Christina Stead
#17. A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson
#18. We've won wars before and we've certainly retained our rights as Americans.
Patrick Leahy
#19. Peace is more than just an absence of war. True peace is justice, true peace is freedom, and true peace dictates the recognition of human rights.
Ronald Reagan
#20. 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
#21. What I remain opposed to is the idea that David Cameron could go around and give up workers' rights, give up environmental protection, give up a whole load of things that are very important.
Jeremy Corbyn
#22. The Voting Rights Act was a seminal victory for our country and a great healing moment. But there are some who want to continue to drive divisions and create phony narratives.
John Cornyn
#23. Respect for Human rights preserves us as A nation.
Auliq Ice
#24. Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
Robert Kennedy
#25. Religious people are not entitled to special rights, even if they are elected leaders or in the majority; they are not allowed to force everyone to support their religion.
Ed Buckner
#26. Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin's mantra that no person is above the law.
Scott Turow
#27. In reality, as their theological roots demonstrate, human rights are only law contaminated by morality.
Alain De Benoist
#28. Through the dark days of legalized segregation and on into the civil rights era, jazz shone as a beacon for achieving interracial respect and understanding. It seemed as if the dream of a color-blind society was within reach in the jazz world, where musicians were judged on merit and not skin color.
Randy Sandke
#29. Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter films and was the family comedy king through the '80s and '90s - 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' 'Home Alone,' etc. - has acquired rights to 'The Cypress House' and is working on the script himself, with intent to direct.
Michael Koryta
#30. A King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience.
Patrick Henry
#31. I support the rights of all people to practice their religious beliefs privately, but I oppose the idea of respecting religions. In truth, I have no respect for any religion. I believe religion is not compatible with human rights, women's rights, or freedom of expression.
Taslima Nasrin
#32. For [Louis] Brandeis, it's not a technical question of channeling what would James Madison say. It's how do we take these inherent human natural rights of liberty and translate them into an age of new technolog
Jeffrey Rosen
#33. It does so happen to be the case that if the freedom of the people of this country-and especially the rights of trade unionists-if those precious things in the past had been left to the good sense and fairmindedness of judges, we would have precious few freedoms in this country.
Michael Foot
#34. In a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. Never let fear prevent you from doing right.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#35. People who concern themselves with the rights of other adults who engage in consensual acts involving sex, love, and/or eating croissants together are damaged and in pain.
Rob Delaney
#36. There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.
Ayn Rand
#37. One of the eternal truths is that happiness is created and developed in peace, and one of the eternal rights is the individual's right to live.
Bertha Von Suttner
#38. A culture is not an abstract thing. It is a living, evolving process. The aim is to push beyond standard-setting and asserting human rights to make those standards a living reality for people everywhere.
Mary Robinson
#39. Vegans are still considered as sort of "out there," a fringe group of animal rights activists with pasty skin and protein issues. However,
Steven D. Levitt
#40. Too often, attention is diverted from the needs of populations, insufficient emphasis is placed on work in the fields, and the goods of the earth are not given adequate protection. As a result, economic imbalance is produced, and the inalienable rights and dignity of every human person are ignored.
Pope Benedict XVI
#41. Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thousand, if necessary, for the defense of our rights, or those of our Southern brethren.
Isham G. Harris
#42. How is the black man going to get 'civil rights' before he first wins his human rights?
Malcolm X
#43. A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
Ayn Rand
#44. To me, feminism is such a simple description: it's equal rights, economic rights, political rights, and social rights.
Callie Khouri
#45. Senator John Stennis:
The civil rights movement did more to free the white man that the black man ... It freed my soul.
Joe Biden
#47. Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking.
Derek Jarman
#48. If you ask someone whether our Constitutional rights are being flushed down the porcelain oubliette, and their response is, "If I answer that honestly they'll arrest me," then you already have your answer.
Robert X. Cringely
#49. I'm too old to figure out the rights and wrongs of everything.
Barbara Else
#50. Peace should be understood in a human way - in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.
Muhammad Yunus
#52. Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is; and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man,
that of being judged by their peers.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#53. I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement.
Douglas Brinkley
#54. The soul of her youth clamored for its rights; for a share in the world's glory and exultation.
Kate Chopin
#55. Since woman's rights have come up a young woman is better able to fight her own battle.
Anthony Trollope
#56. What constitutes a state? ... Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain ... And sovereign law, that state's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell
#57. China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights. We will continue our efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law.
Hu Jintao
#58. I'm totally applying assumed Creative Commons rights.
Ryan North
#59. The women's rights movement of the 1970s had not yet emerged; except for Bella Abzug, I had no women supporters.
Constance Baker Motley
#60. I set out to create a means whereby music could be a way of vindicating the rights of the masses.
Gustavo Dudamel
#61. To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Oscar Wilde
#62. The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.
Thomas Jefferson
#63. TV pollutes our minds and dulls our senses. It is a babysitter that molests children. And yet those who are on the television scream "first amendment" and "freedom of speech". How is corporate control freedom of speech? And what rights did our forefathers grant corporations, anyway?
James Rozoff
#64. It is not the rights of women to occupy "official" ministerial roles, nor their equality to men in those roles, that set the terms of their service to God and their neighbors. It is their obligations that do so - obligations that derive from their human abilities empowered by divine gifting.
Alan F. Johnson
#65. Contrary to all the blather we here about the unique goodness of the American people or our religious heritage or anything else, the one thing that set this country apart from all others was the Bill of Rights.
Harry Browne
#66. Rosa Parks was a woman of strength, conviction, and morality. Her action on December 1, 1955, to defy the law made her a leading figure in our nation's civil rights history.
John Shimkus
#67. I had the human rights life, and I had the family business life.
Sanjay Rawal
#68. No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
H.L. Mencken
#69. History could not be any clearer: Rights given by fad and fashion are just as easily taken away. The Constitution matters.
A.E. Samaan
#70. Martin Luther King (Jr.) during the civil rights movement used to exclaim that he looked forward to heaven where he would be "Free at last." That is the inscription on his tomb in Atlanta.
Billy Graham
#71. I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights.
Ron Paul
#72. I think everybody should get married. Boys and girls. Girls and boys. Boys and boys! Girls and girls! Shouldn't we all be entitled to a family-Civil rights baby it's civil rights. It doesn't get any better here in Berkeley I'll tell you that.
Billie Joe Armstrong
#73. I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all.
Sojourner Truth
#74. Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts.
Roger Wicker
#75. As a husband and a father of two daughters, I want young women around the globe to have the same rights and opportunities as my daughters.
Mike Quigley
#76. Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.
Shimon Peres
#77. I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
Clarence Thomas
#79. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.
Thomas Sowell
#80. When everyone else is more comfortable remaining voiceless,
Rather than fighting for humans that have had their rights stolen,
I might not be the same, but that's not important.
No freedom 'til we're equal, damn right I support it.
Macklemore
#81. In a justly organized community, however, government exists to secure the right to life and the other human rights that follow from that primary right.
Paul Ryan
#82. The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.
George Washington
#83. I am a fierce supporter of Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and gay rights in this country.
Bernie Sanders
#84. If you are a woman, reading my tale, learn to fight for your rights and the respect you deserve as a human being. But, if you are a man, reading my tale, learn to respect women and, likewise, advocate for them.
Yanan Melo
#85. Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
Ronald Reagan
#86. Forgiveness is a big part of - especially post-civil rights movement - is a big part of African-American Christianity, and I wasn't raised within the Christian church; I wasn't raised within any church.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#87. All we demand are the same rights as men, and slightly more stalls per restroom. And tampon machines. And those little things in the stalls so we can put our used tampons in them. And, okay, just go ahead and make the bathrooms out of tampons.
Susan B. Anthony
#88. The current Human Rights Commission's working group is made up of the Netherlands, Hungary, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe. No, I'm not making that up.
Andrew Sullivan
#89. Every time guns fall into the wrong hands and are used to intimidate, injure, or murder women, it erodes the rights of responsible gun owners everywhere.
Gabrielle Giffords
#90. Bacon , Locke , Descartes , Hume , and all the others knew they were giving rights to vulgarity. But in so doing in addition to caring for man's well-being they were providing rights for themselves.
Allan Bloom
#91. Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.
Iris Chang
#92. Culture is about humanizing people. You look at the African-American civil rights movement, you look at the LGBT rights movement - the culture changed before the politics did.
Jose Antonio Vargas
#93. Join America taught English, an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, that the Bill of Rights is the ultimate insurance policy for a citizen, and that being a citizen is not an entitlement. And we also taught a bit of capitalism.
Niger Innis
#94. My hope is that the 21st century will be the first century where there will be no violation of human rights, and to that end, Japan would like to do our outmost.
Shinzo Abe
#95. To every woman who gave birth, to every citizen and taxpayer, it's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women of the United States of America!
Patricia Arquette
#96. While on the level of civil rights many things have changed decisively for the better, on the level of attitudes and mentality there's still a long way to go. On the other hand it's obvious that it's much easier to change a law than to change a way of thinking.
Dacia Maraini
#97. One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living.
Ayn Rand
#98. My crime is that I will not go with the multitude to do evil. My singularity is that when I say that freedom is of God and slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is that I insist on the American people abolishing slavery, or ceasing to prate on the rights of man.
William Lloyd Garrison
#99. Can you tell me what it means to waive your rights?
I hold my breath as Jacob hesitates. And then slowly, beautifully, the right fist he's been banging against the wooden railing unfurls and is raised over his head, moving back and forth like a metronome.
Jodi Picoult
#100. Not upholding a persons legal rights is a form of abuse. Unfortunately, USA government abuse of the general public is a normal state of affairs in many areas.
Steven Magee
