Quotes About States Rights

#1. Today neither of our two parties maintains a meaningful commitment to the principle of States' Rights. The 10th Amendment is not a 'general assumption' but a rule of law. States rights mean that states have a right to act or not to act, as they see fit, in areas reserved to them.

Barry Goldwater

#2. 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

#3. Do you think states' rights would have disappeared if state legislatures still elected our United States senators? Do you think our United States senators would be difficult to contact if they were named by our state legislatures?

Rob Woodall

#4. The rights of some must not be enjoyed by denying the rights of others. Neither can we permit states' rights at the expense of human rights.

George W. Romney

#5. The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights

Hubert H. Humphrey

#6. What began as a bitter dispute over Union and States' Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said perhaps more than he knew. The war was about a new birth of freedom.

Bruce Catton

#7. I'm a strong supporter of states' rights to do what they need.

Brian Sandoval

#8. If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.

James Q. Wilson

#9. Principles-and I have in mind such principles as states' rights or national sovereignty or the free market or pacifism-have a way of drying up while the sap of life goes flowing in another direction.

Max Lerner

#10. Under the Constitution, federal law trumps both state and city law. But antitrust law allows states some exceptional leeway to adopt anticompetitive business regulations, out of respect for states' rights to regulate business. This federal respect for states' rights does not extend to cities.

Marvin Ammori

#11. Federalism isn't about states' rights. It's about dividing power to better protect individual liberty.

Elizabeth Price Foley

#12. "Family" this and "family" that. If I had a family I'd be furious that moral busybodies are taking the perfectly good word family and using it as a code for censorship the same way "states' rights" was used to disguise racism in the mid-sixties.

John Waters

#13. I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like, 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.

John Shelton Reed

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,

Dick Cheney

#17. The poor Americans are so busy defending the rights of Hindus in Pakistan, Moslems in India, Jews in Palestine, Koreans in Japan, Italians in Yugoslavia and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia that they simply cannot give a thought to Negroes in the United States.

George Mikes

#18. No other country in the world disenfranchises people who are released from prison in a manner even remotely resembling the United States. In fact, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has charged that U.S. disenfranchisement policies are discriminatory and violate international law.

Michelle Alexander

#19. When states are absent, rights - by any definition - are impossible to sustain. States are not structures to be taken for granted, exploited, or discarded, but are fruits of long and quiet effort.

Timothy Snyder

#20. The disgraceful and shameful construction of walls, the increasing enforcement of security systems and increasing violation of human rights and labor rights will not protect the economy of the United States.

Tucker Carlson

#21. 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

#22. Every State is known by the rights it maintains.

Harold Laski

#23. Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

John Adams

#24. 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

#25. I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One. And my objective was to force the federal government - the Kennedy administration at that time - into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen.

James Meredith

#26. In a police state, referencing one's rights is seen as an act of aggression.

Philip Schuyler

#27. The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.

Thomas Jefferson

#28. The freedom to bear arms may be righteously rejected to encourage the preservation of all corporeal forms of life.

Kevin Alan Lee

#29. Wage theft, worker rights and workplace discrimination should not be swept under the rug. The United States cannot have a functional economy where all the gains go to the corporate class while all the pain goes to regular workers.

James P. Hoffa

#30. It's time to recognize that under the equal protection clause of the United States [Constitution], same-sex couples should have the same rights as anybody else.

Barack Obama

#31. Within the last thirty years, the United States under the reign of market fundamentalism has been transformed into a society that is more about forgetting than learning, more about consuming than producing, more about asserting private interests than democratic rights.

Henry A. Giroux

#32. Women in Afghanistan do not ask the United States to stay for the simple or sentimental reason of safeguarding their rights. They are the first ones to say that this is not enough of a reason for the world's remaining superpower to remain in their country.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

#33. Currently, the United States provides 22 percent of the U.N. annual budgets, over $900 million in fiscal year 2007, and some of that funding goes to the Human Rights Council.

Michael McCaul

#34. When human rights are systematically abused, it raises the question whether it may be legitimate in some circumstances for the international community to intervene within individual states as well as in conflicts between states.

Charles Kennedy

#35. Welfare states come in different shapes and sizes; they are constructed on diverging conceptions of social rights and duties; some stress equality and solidarity, others freedom; and the range of policy objectives is vast and widely dissimilar.

Kees Van Kersbergen

#36. Mr. President, the cause of this great discontent in the country, the cause of the evils which we now suffer and which we now fear, originates chiefly from questions growing out of the respective rights of the different States and the unfortunate subject of slavery ...

John J. Crittenden

#37. 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

#38. For in the end laws are just words on a page - words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye.

Barack Obama

#39. defense of states and rights is impossible to undertake if no one learns from the past or believes in the future.

Timothy Snyder

#40. 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

#41. It is interesting that both Chicano and Puerto Rican art in the United States form an important part of the Civil Rights legacy and dialog.

Mari Carmen Ramirez

#42. The civil rights movement is understanding your freedom under the Constitution of these United States and if anyone tries to take those freedoms from you, you better rise up and fight and that's what we're doing together.

Ken Hutcherson

#43. 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

#44. The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreebly to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.

George Washington

#45. United States Government needs to acknowledge and respect our sovereignty, treaties, traditional Native American values, and our human rights as a people, which under the law as written we deserve, and which should be protected.

Leonard Peltier

#46. 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

#47. I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.

L. Neil Smith

#48. African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States, and excite in his bosom a lively, deep, decided and heart-felt interest.

Maria W. Stewart

#49. 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

#50. If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.

Daniel Webster

#51. A hastily written "Civil Rights Act" was rushed through Congress. President Andrew Johnson immediately vetoed it, noting that the right to confer citizenship rested with the several states, and that "the tendency of the bill is to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion".

Eustace Mullins

#52. Well, my personal mission statement is that we want marriage equality in all 50 states. We want it not to be a state-by-state issue. We don't want it to be something the majority is voting on. I don't think the civil rights of any minority should be in the hands of any majority.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

#53. Apple is to the United States government what Clarence Thomas was to the civil rights coalition. How dare you get this big sidestepping us.

Rush Limbaugh

#54. Some of them, in accepting the proposed plan of government, coupled their acceptance with a recommendation of various additions to the Constitution, which they deemed essential to the preservation of the rights of the States, or of the People.

Caleb Cushing

#55. In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.

Gore Vidal

#56. America was founded on the principle of inalienable rights, not dictated duties. The Declaration of Independence states that every human being has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It does not state that he is born a slave to the needs of others.

Alex Epstein

#57. I like talking about people who don't have any power and it seems like some of the least powerful people in the United States are the migrant workers who come and do our work and don't have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here, and at the same time ask them to leave.

Stephen Colbert

#58. As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less.

Noam Chomsky

#59. Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.

Bayard Rustin

#60. Since the global economic crisis began, the change in global attitudes is clear to see - and I think it is pitiful. Barack Obama came to China and he is probably the only president of the United States never to mention the words 'human rights' in public.

Ai Weiwei

#61. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.

Alexander Hamilton

#62. It is my privilege to have introduced House Resolution 1612 honoring the Constitution of the United States, and the freedoms and rights it has given to every American.

Bob Latta

#63. The entire animal rights movement in the United States reacted with unfettered glee at the Ban in England ... We view this act of parliament as one of the most important actions in the history of the animal rights movement. This will energise our efforts to stop hunting with hounds.

Wayne Pacelle

#64. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen; an open and resolute friend; and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND, and of the FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES OF AMERICA.

Thomas Paine

#65. 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

#66. The United States' administrations ... must recognize that Iran is a big power. Having said that, we consider ourselves to be a human force and a cultural power and hence a friend of other nations. We have never sought to dominate others or to violate the rights of any other country.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

#67. I think the Prime Minister is the first to acknowledge that Malaysia's still got some work to do. Just like the United States, by the way, has some work to do on these issues. Human Rights Watch probably has a list of things they think we should be doing as a government.

Barack Obama

#68. If the States were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the Convention refused to baptize it by that name.

Daniel Webster

#69. People in this country need to understand when you go to any airport in the United States, you are not protected by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. They can do anything they want to you, and there is no where you can go to seek redress.

Jesse Ventura

#70. The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.

Frederick Douglass

#71. The Union next to our liberties the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union.

John C. Calhoun

#72. In my judgment, the slogan "black power" and what has been associated with it has set the civil rights movement back considerably in the United States over the period of the last several months.

Robert Kennedy

#73. The United States has held out against taking part in any of the world consensus that there should be a court of human rights or that there should be an international court of criminal justice.

Roger Waters

#74. Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.

Linda Chavez

#75. Ours was the first nation to be founded on the idea that all are created equal and all deserve equal treatment under the law. Despite our missteps and shortcomings, these ideals still inspire hope among the oppressed and give us pride in being Americans.

Jimmy Carter

#76. There's never been a nation like the United States, ever. It begins with the principles of our founding documents, principles that recognize that our rights come from God, not from our government.

Marco Rubio

#77. The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights of the States subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undeniably recognizes in the people the power to resume the authority delegated for the purposes of Government.

Jefferson Davis

#78. The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer ... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.

Andrew Jackson

#79. 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

#80. Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.

Alice Paul

#81. 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

#82. I hope to continue to be an activist for kids and teenagers and especially girls who are living with HIV/AIDS, because all over the world, people don't have the same rights that we do in the United States.

Jenna Bush

#83. Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.

William H. Seward

#84. Our Supreme Court is not a court of law. It is a court of conjecture and political fad.

A.E. Samaan

#85. Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins ...

T. Rafael Cimino

#86. According to Andrew Jackson Rogers, a New Jersey Democrat, "If you pass this bill you will allow the negroes of this country to compete for the high office of President of the United States" - no "civilized" country on earth gave rights to such "barbarians.

Elizabeth R. Varon

#87. The Grocery Manufacturers Association is behind the bills which have been trying to pre-empt states' labeling laws in the Senate. And they have a lot of money and power in Washington. So it's a classic David versus Goliath story, where corporate lobbying outweighs consumers' rights.

Zoe Lister-Jones

#88. After the Civil War, when blacks fought along whites to secure freedom for all, southern states enacted Black Codes, laws that restricted the civil rights and liberties of blacks. Central to the enforcement of these laws were the stiff penalties for blacks possessing firearms.

Niger Innis

#89. There are still states that have not evolved so much as California, that still skimp on recognition and, even worse, the rights of immigrants.

Enrique Pena Nieto

#90. I know that throughout their history, the people of the United States defended their freedom, their liberty, their justice, and their rights - if need be - with their lives. I think their courage is so admirable.

Lee Myung-bak

#91. I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

Jimmy Carter

#92. What we have seen in recent years in the United States is the church's rights to express itself, and to conduct its own affairs, being insidiously eroded.

Bruce L. Shelley

#93. In the States, there's ESPN3, and each country has different options, and other than premiere league football, there tends to be very little global content. And movie and TV rights are pretty broad content.

Reed Hastings

#94. Who talks most about freedom and equality? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?

Alexander Hamilton

#95. 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

#96. At Cheney's initiative, the United States stripped terror suspects of long-established rights under domestic and international law, building a new legal edifice under exclusive White House ownership.

Barton Gellman

#97. If we are not able to bring the churches, the synagogues, [and] the mosques around to the animal rights view, we will never make large-scale progress for animal rights in the United States.

Norm Phelps

#98. It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

Tariq Ali

#99. Rights of true citizenship accrue only to those who serve the State to which they belong.

Mahatma Gandhi

#100. When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law.

Patricia Ireland