Famous Quotes & Sayings

Calvin Coolidge

Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.

Busy Philipps

It's ludicrous that my friends in California aren't able to legally get married. It's a civil rights issue. In 20 years we're going to look back at tapes of these antigay people saying ridiculous things on the news and it's going to sound as antiquated as the newsreels of horrible racists from the '50s.

Carol Bellamy

And each of us can practice rights ourselves, treating each other without discrimination, respecting each other's dignity and rights.

Carol Bellamy

By ratifying the Convention, governments become legally bound to implement the rights therein.

Alan Keyes

You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.

Alan Dershowitz

Individuals have the right to pick and choose which expressions to condemn, which to praise and which to say nothing about. Governments, however, must remain neutral as to the content of expression. And governments must protect the rights of all to express even the most despicable of views.

Alan Dershowitz

In today's distorted world of 'human rights,' truth takes a back seat to ideology, and false claims - especially those that 'support' radical ideologies - persist even after they have been exposed.

Alan Dershowitz

To ask about the 'source' of rights or morals assumes an erreous conclusion. To ask about the source of morals is to assume that such a source exists. As if it existed outside of human constructed systems. The 'source' is the human ability to learn from experience and to entrench rights in our laws and in our consciousness. Our rights come from our long history of wrongs.

Al Gini

Part of the true luxury of "earned laziness" are the braggin rights that come along with being purposefully and publicly lazy. It is a badge of distinction, an emblem of success, without having to say too much about it. It labels us, affords us kudos, and raises our profile in the "pecking order" of our fellow troglodytes. It says to others, "See, I've done so well that I can afford to do nothing at all whenever I so choose!

Al Franken

The institutions that we've built up over the years to protect our individual privacy rights from the government don't apply to the private sector. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to corporations. The Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to Silicon Valley. And you can't impeach Google if it breaks its 'Don't be evil' campaign pledge.

Al Franken

I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.

Barry Goldwater

Trade unions infringe upon the property rights of company owners.

Antonin Scalia

If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: 'The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,' I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.

Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done.

Elihu Root

Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.

Elif Safak

Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it's a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women's rights.

Albert J. Nock

The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

Albert Camus

Only he who is uncompromising as to his rights maintains the sense of duty.

Albert Camus

Suffering gives us no special rights.

Annie Lennox

Those in the developing world have so few rights - we take a lot for granted in the developed world.

Annie Lennox

I stand on the shoulders of giants that have gone before me, in terms of affording people like myself, women, the access to democracy, the vote, medical treatment, education, everything that I've been given. It's all been earned. Therefore I feel it's incumbent on me personally to just contribute something, to add to a collective voice that needs to be here right now, to build it up to a tipping point, to make the world aware that women's rights still have to be addressed and that the word 'feminism' has been devalued and needs to be reclaimed.

Daniel Kammen

Environmental laws give power to the people. Republicans can huff, puff and scream about what they consider strict regulations, but when they cry out for reform, for a quicker process, they're really calling for a restriction of the rights of people to be involved in the planning process.

Constance Baker Motley

The women's rights movement of the 1970s had not yet emerged; except for Bella Abzug, I had no women supporters.

Conor Oberst

Joe Arpaio needs no help from me getting attention. For years he has been a beacon of bigotry and intolerance for all the world to see. The list of human and civil-rights abuses he's committed in Maricopa County is long and well documented.

Clare Short

To tackle the underlying roots of violence and conflict, we need a massive international effort to reduce poverty and injustice, and to promote development, democracy and human rights.

Claire McCaskill

There are people who have legitimate concerns about false accusations and the impact that can have on a young person's life when they have been falsely accused. Kirsten [Gillibrand] and I are not unaware that that is an issue we need to be concerned about, and that's why we have made changes in the legislation to address not just the rights of the victim, the accuser, but also of the accused.

Daniel Pennac

Reader's Bill of Rights 1. The right to not read 2. The right to skip pages 3. The right to not finish 4. The right to reread 5. The right to read anything 6. The right to escapism 7. The right to read anywhere 8. The right to browse 9. The right to read out loud 10. The right to not defend your tastes

Cynthia McKinney

Eight generations of African-Americans are still waiting to achieve their rights - compensation and restitution for the hundreds of years during which they were bought and sold on the market.

Andrew Young

There's no problem on the planet that can't be solved without violence. That's the lesson of the civil rights movement.

Andrew Young

I'm against voter fraud in any form, and I have long supported a national voter ID card. But ID cards need not - and must not - restrict voting rights in any way, shape or form.

Andrew Young

The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

Chuck Palahniuk

A little old lady sitting at the front of the bus can do nothing to change civil rights.

Chuck Hagel

The United Nations has a critical role to play in promoting stability, security, democracy, human rights, and economic development. The UN is as relevant today as at any time in its history, but it needs reform.