Bill Of Rights Quotes - Page 8

• If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all — except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

  John F. Kennedy

  Wise, Strong, Reading

  Saturday Review, p. 44, October 29, 1960.

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• When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, Moving, Gun

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• You will never meet anyone who admires the American founders more than I do, but they were human, they made mistakes. Perhaps their worst was that their Bill of Rights stops at the border. Inside the US, the federal government has been limited. Beyond the borders, the government has been able to do anything it wanted.

  Richard J. Maybury

  Freedom, Mistake, Rights

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• The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.

  Harry S. Truman

  Bible, God, Religious

  United States. President (1945-1953 : Truman), Harry S. Truman (1961). “Harry S. Truman: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, 1945-53”

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• When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, Moving, Weekend

  "Interview on MTV's "Enough is Enough" Forum". www.presidency.ucsb.edu. April 19, 1994.

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• Today, as always, the people, no less than the courts, must remain vigilant to preserve the principals of our Bill of Rights, lest in our desire to be secure we lose our ability to be free.

  Earl Warren

  Gun, Rights, People

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• It is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of all constitutions, bills of rights and laws. This is the meaning of all struggles which men have fought for liberty.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Freedom, Struggle, Men

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.350, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights is my Concealed Weapons Permit, period.

  Ted Nugent

  Gun, Rights, Second Amendment

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• 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

  Daniel Pennac

  Rights, Pages, Bills

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• We have a list of human rights - right to food, right to shelter, right to health, right to education, many such items which are considered and accepted as bill of rights. These are to be insured to people. So all nations, all societies try to do that.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Rights, People, Trying

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• There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded...2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Two, Principles

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• I will now add what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Army, Omission, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.337, Penguin

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• The following [addition to the Bill of Rights] would have pleased me: The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the [United States] with foreign nations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Writing, Rights, People

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• 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

  Country, Airports, Rights

  "Jesse Ventura No Longer Flies, Thanks To Transportation Security Administration" By Andrea Stone, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 3, 2012.

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• I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for... protection against standing armies

  Thomas Jefferson

  Army, Rights, Omission

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• We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation in 1789 [of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man], the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the U.S., and the adoption of comparable declarations at different times in other countries.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Country, Men, Rights

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• The Republican program is the profit-protection program for the insurance industry It's a bill of goods, it's a bill of wrongs. Ours is a patients' bill of rights.

  Edward Kennedy

  Rights, Bills, Patient

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• The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

  H. L. Mencken

  Gun, Rights, Hands

  "On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe". Book by H L. Mencken, 1956.

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• The founders understood that democracy would inevitably evolve into a system of legalized plunder unless the plundered were given numerous escape routes and constitutional protections such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, election of senators by state legislators, the electoral college, no income taxation, most governmental functions performed at the state and local levels, and myriad other constitutional limitations on the powers of the central government.

  Thomas DiLorenzo

  College, Rights, Government

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• Let them all believe whatever they want. It is pointless to go on radio shows and wrangle over mystical claims. However, such claims must not be imposed on captive children in government-owned schools. That is prohibited by the separation of church and state, a core principle in the First Amendment in America's Bill of Rights.

  James A. Haught

  Children, Believe, School

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• Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.

  Thurgood Marshall

  Struggle, Sacrifice, Rights

  Thurgood Marshall, Mark V. Tushnet (2001). “Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences”, p.285, Chicago Review Press

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• The real fabric of American society is not all those flags you see on people's cars...it's in the Bill of Rights and in our constitutional form of government.

  John Adams

  Peace, Real, War

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• I went to my library, right? And I started to research the Bill of Rights and I did not technically find anything that said all Americans shall eat shrimp with whoever they like. But, I found some things that are close enough to infer that I am within my legal rights to enjoy seafood with whomever I choose.

  John Mayer

  Rights, Library, Shrimp

  "John Mayer Speaks About Eating With Jessica". Access Hollywood Interview, www.accessonline.com. October 30, 2007.

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• If gay Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break. That is my opinion.

  Jeanne Phillips

  Gay, Rights, Citizens

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• Terrorists and their allies believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights and every charter of liberty ever written are lies to be burned and destroyed and forgotten.

  George W. Bush

  Lying, Believe, Rights

  United Nations General Assembly Address, delivered 21 September 2004, New York, NY

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