Famous Quotes & Sayings

Patrick Leahy

The rights of copyright holders need to be protected, but some draconian remedies that have been suggested would create more problems than they would solve.

Patrick Henry

It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains.

Joseph Sobran

The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that might be summoned into action against the federal government itself, if it became tyrannical.

Paul Robeson

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.

Patricia Arquette

Women have more rights, and women do have their own power in the world.

Pasquier Quesnel

Zeal is very blind, or badly regulated, when it encroaches upon the rights of others.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A friend is never alarmed for us in the right place.

Leopoldo Lopez

We must not allow the practices of an anti-democratic State that abuses the powers of government to violate the human rights of Venezuelans.

Learned Hand

It is still in the lap of the gods whether a society can succeed which is based on "civil liberties and human rights" conceived as I have tried to describe them; but of one thing at least we may be sure: the alternatives that have so far appeared have been immeasurably worse.

Laurence Tribe

[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government.

Nawal El Saadawi

What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can illuminate the present and pave the way to a better future. For example, if we delve more deeply into ancient Egyptian and African civilisations we will discover the humanistic elements that were prevalent in many areas of life. Women enjoyed a high status and rights, which they later lost when class patriarchal society became the prevalent social system.

Mikhail Bakunin

The right to unite freely and to separate freely is the first and most important of all political rights.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Is is always time to do the right thing.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is always the right time to do the right thing.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

President Lyndon Johnson's high spirits were marked as he circulated among the many guests whom he had invited to witness an event he confidently felt to be historic, the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.... The bill that lay on the polished mahogany desk was born in violence in Selma, Alabama, where a stubborn sheriff... had stumbled against the future.

Mark Udall

Ranchers need clean water for their stock, farmers need it for their crops, every employer needs it to stay in business, and every living thing needs it for life... The law needs to be clear to protect water quality and the rights of landowners.

Nicholas D. Kristof

In general, talking about human rights tends to be very persuasive for people who care about human rights.

Nathanael Greene

I am determined to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt.

Nathan Myhrvold

If people don't get paid for their inventions, that's not a good thing. In the case of many patents, there are people who aren't in a position to take them to the next level. If you don't enforce your rights, no one is going to enforce them for you.

Potter Stewart

The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.

Nelson Mandela

But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.

Nelson Mandela

There's one place where (Fidel Castro’s) Cuba stands out head and shoulders above the rest – that is in its love for human rights and liberty!

Nelson Mandela

As long as women are bound by poverty and as long as they are looked down upon, human rights will lack substance.

Rachel Maddow

Here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.

Noam Chomsky

There is no western concern for issues of aggression, atrocities, human rights abuses and so on if there's a profit to be made from them

Noam Chomsky

The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic.

Noam Chomsky

The term 'globalisation' is conventionally used to refer to the specific form of investor-rights integration designed by wealth and power, for their own interests.

Noam Chomsky

Terror became a big issue when the Reagan Administration came in. They immediately announced [their plans] and kind of disparaged Carter's alleged human rights programs. The main issue is state-directed international terrorism. Right at that time that big industry developed. That's when you start getting the academic departments on terrorism.

Noam Chomsky

The US and Israel have demanded further that Palestinians not only recognize Israel's rights as a state in the international system, but that they also recognize Israel's abstract right to exist, a concept that has no place in international law or diplomacy, and a right claimed by no one. In effect, the US and Israel are demanding that Palestinians . . . formally accept the legitimacy of their expulsion from their own land. They cannot be expected to accept that, just as Mexico does not grant the US the right to exist on half of Mexico's territory, gained by conquest.

John Ashcroft

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

Oprah Winfrey

The greatest contribution you can make to women's rights, is to be the absolute ... best at what you do.

Oliver Herford

If some people got their rights they would complain of being deprived of their wrongs.