Famous Quotes & Sayings

Noam Chomsky

In some ways, [the student anti-sweatshop movement] is like the anti-apartheid movement, except that in this case its striking at the core of the relations of exploitation. Much of this was initiated by Charlie Kernaghan of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights...

Mary McCarthy

Once the state is looked upon as the source of rights, rather than their bound protector, freedom becomes conditional on the pleasure of the state.

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.

Lucretia Mott

I grew up so thoroughly imbued with women's rights that it was the most important question of my life from a very early day.

Liya Kebede

Investing in women's lives is an investment in sustainable development, in human rights, in future generations - and consequently in our own long-term national interests.

Michael Savage

When I hear someone’s in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-25.

Michael K. Simpson

History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state.

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.

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.

Oliver Herford

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

Marcus Luttrell

..Washington, where the human rights of terrorists are often given high priority. And I am certain liberal politicians would defend their position to the death. Because everyone knows liberals have never been wrong about anything. You can ask them. Anytime.

Kevin Mitnick

I can go into LinkedIn and search for network engineers and come up with a list of great spear-phishing targets because they usually have administrator rights over the network. Then I go onto Twitter or Facebook and trick them into doing something, and I have privileged access.

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.

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.

Larry Sabato

The Constitution remains brilliant in its overall design and sound with respect to the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers. But there are numerous archaic provisions that inhibit constructive change and adaptation. These constitutional bits affect the daily life of the republic and every citizen in it.

L. Neil Smith

Most libertarians agree that all rights are, in effect, property rights, beginning with this fundamental right to self-ownership and control of one's own life. As owners of their own lives, individuals are completely free to do absolutely anything they wish with them provided, of course, that it doesn't violate the identical right of others whether the people around them approve of what they do or not.

L. Neil Smith

The Bill of Rights isn't about us, it's about them . It isn't a list of things we're permitted to do, it's a list of things they aren't allowed even to consider.

L. Neil Smith

Like the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.

L. Neil Smith

We're most likely to lose our rights when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to deprive others of theirs.

P. J. O'Rourke

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.