Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Rangel

The Klan had used fear, intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over African-Americans who sought justice and equality and it sought to respond to the young workers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the same way.

Charles Schumer

I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.

Charles Schumer

Obviously, there are conservatives who are in the mainstream and conservatives who would take people's rights away.

Bob Latta

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.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

The UN declaration on human rights must always be first in line before religion or other cultural habits, in case of any conflict between them.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

Cultural variety is always worth striving for, but must never precede the declaration of human rights.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

Some values must be universal, like human rights and the equal worth of every human being.

Derrick Bell

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

Clarence Day

Ants are good citizens; they place group interest first. But they carry it so far, they have few or no political rights. An ant doesn't have the vote, apparently; he just has his duties.

Elizabeth Warren

The administration [ of Barack Obama ]says I`m wrong, that there`s nothing to worry about. They say the deal is nearly done, and they are making a lot of promises about how the deal will affect workers, the environment and human rights - promises. But people like you can`t see the actual deal.

Arthur Henderson

As a first step there must be an offer to achieve equality of rights in disarmament by abolishing the weapons forbidden to the Central Powers by the Peace Treaties.

Arlen Specter

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

Lysander Spooner

To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.

Chelsea Clinton

It just seems so fundamental to me. I'm able to marry the person I wanted to marry. That's the fundamental human imperative. Those of us who have been lucky enough should expand these rights to others.

Ai Weiwei

For all the tough talk about China during the presidential debates, Romney and Obama evaded any mention of China's suspect human rights record, corruption, and rule of law. By not tackling these controversial topics, the candidates are protecting a strategic partnership with China at the expense of essential human values and beliefs.

Ai Weiwei

Liberty is about our rights to question everything.

Bob Menendez

We should seek international support for our mutual objectives abroad, in promoting freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, and also the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

Bernice Johnson Reagon

I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience

Bernice Johnson Reagon

The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.

Earl Warren

Citizenship is the right to have rights.

Earl Warren

It is doubtful that congress would pass the Bill of Rights if it were introduced today.

Earl Warren

When the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes.

David Ricardo

The last point for consideration is the supposed disposition of the people to interfere with the rights of property. So essential does it appear to me, to the cause of good government, that the rights of property should be held sacred, that I would agree to deprive those of the elective franchise against whom it could justly be alleged that they considered it their interest to invade them.

David Henry Hwang

. . . I felt I was finally in a position to affect not only the artistic content of the American theatre, but also its institutional structures. This has been an important goal of mine, as there have always been a variety of issues - artistic freedom, author's rights, access by minority groups - which have concerned me and even influenced my decision to become a playwright in the first place.

Dean Rusk

Let me say with a Georgia accent that we cannot solve this problem if it requires a diplomatic passport to claim the rights of an American citizen.

Eldridge Cleaver

I've gone beyond civil rights and human rights to creation rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt

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

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights...

Eleanor Roosevelt

It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded.

Eleanor Roosevelt

A respect for the rights of other peoples to determine their forms of government and their economy will not weaken our democracy. It will inevitably strengthen it.

Eleanor Roosevelt

We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind, that is the approval by the General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Eduardo Galeano

Human rights pale beside the rights of machines. In more and more cities, especially in the great metropolises of the South, people have been banned. Automobiles usurp human space, poison the air, and frequently murder the interlopers who invade their conquered territory -and no one lifts a finger to stop them. Is there a difference between violence that kills by car and that which kills by knife or bullet?" (p.231)

Edward Abbey

Rocks, like louseworts and snail darters and pupfish and 3rd-world black, lesbian, militant poets, have rights, too. Especially the right to exist.