Bill Of Rights Quotes - Page 6

• From my admittedly cranky perspective, Bush/Cheney are lousy on the Bill of Rights, Clinton/Gore were lousy on the Bill of Rights, and everyone within bribing distance of the 2008 election (Hillary, McCain, Giuliani) are lousy on the Bill of Rights, too.

  Matt Welch

  Distance, Rights, Perspective

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• The Bill of Rights existed long before President Obama was elected, and as long as I’m a U.S. Senator, I will fight to protect the basic rights and liberties that belong to all of us as American citizens.

  Rand Paul

  Fighting, Rights, Long

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• The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Rights, Criminals

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.92, Penguin

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• The U.S. Bill of Rights is being steadily eroded, with two million telephone calls tapped, 30 million workers under electronic surveillance, and, says the author, countless Americans harassed by a government that wages spurious wars against drugs and terrorism.

  Gore Vidal

  War, Rights, Government

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• In these sacred documents are embodied eternal principles that no man, group of men, or nation has the right to withhold from others. Here is our basis for freedom of individual achievement. Our Constitution with its Bill of Rights guarantees to all our people the greatest freedom ever enjoyed by the people of any great nation. This system guarantees freedom of individual enterprise, freedom to own property, freedom to start one's own business and to operate it according to one's own judgment so long as the enterprise is honorable.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Men, Rights, Long

  Ezra Taft Benson (1974). “God, family, country: our three great loyalties”

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• I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination.

  Azar Nafisi

  Rights, Imagination, Bills

  Azar Nafisi (2015). “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, p.337, Penguin UK

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• If I look back, the one thing that I am proud of is that for once I as a political leader, kept every promise I made within one term of office. We achieved a new constitution; we achieved a new bill of rights, which encapsulated this vision of justice for all.

  Frederik Willem de Klerk

  Justice, Office, Leader

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Bills, Troops

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.254, Knopf

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• There was not a member of the Constitutional Convention who had the least objection to what is contended for by the advocates for a Bill of Rights and trial by jury.

  George Washington

  Rights, Law, Trials

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1847). “pt. III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789”, p.357

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• Asset forfeiture is a mockery of the Bill of Rights. There is no presumption of innocence, no need to prove you guilty (or even charge you with a crime), no right to a jury trial, no right to confront your accuser, no right to a court-appointed attorney (even if the government has just stolen all your money), and no right to compensation for the property that's been taken.

  Harry Browne

  Taken, Rights, Government

  Harry Browne (2000). “The Great Libertarian Offer”, Liam Works

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• Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves. When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected "radicals" without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail....we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity.

  Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

  Men, Thinking, Rights

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• [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.

  Laurence Tribe

  Rights, Government, People

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• Some of the folks on both sides might be sincere, but it does seem as if it is only the opposition that cares about the Bill of Rights most of the time.

  James Bovard

  Rights, Two Sides, Doe

  "Talkin' to America" with Aaron Zelman, jpfo.org.

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• We may be thankful that frightened civil authorities ... have not managed to eradicate from the country the tradition of the possession and use of firearms, that profound and almost instinctive tradition of Americans. Luckily for us, our tradition of bearing arms has not gone from the country, the tradition is so deep and so dear to us that it is one of the most treasured parts of the Bill of Rights - the right of all Americans to bear arms, with the implication that they will know how to use them.

  John Steinbeck

  Country, Rights, America

  John Steinbeck (2009). “Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team”, p.31, Penguin

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• The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism.

  Adlai Stevenson I

  Patriotic, Rights, Insightful

  "Lend Me Your Ears : Great Speeches In History" by William Safire, (p. 81), 2004.

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• The right to be a journalist is part of the Bill of Rights.

  John C. Dvorak

  Rights, Politics, Bills

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• The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.

  John Ashcroft

  Fighting, Rights, Citizens

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• The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind - each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others.

  Carl Sagan

  Rights, Mind, Church

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.552, Ballantine Books

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• We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Opportunity, Rights, Government

  "West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 319 U.S. 641". Judicial opinion, 1943.

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• If you believe in the values of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you're willing to work hard and play by the rules, you are part of our family. And we're proud to be with you.

  William J. Clinton

  Believe, Hard Work, Rights

  Clinton, William J. (1997). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995”, p.1416, Best Books on

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

  L. Neil Smith

  Rights, Government, Bills

  "How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb?". Remarks to the Second Annual Freedom Summit, www.lneilsmith.org. October 12-13, 2002.

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• The postwar [WWII] GI Bill of Rights - and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America's veterans - signaled the shift to the knowledge society. Future historians may consider it the most important event of the twentieth century. We are clearly in the midst of this transformation; indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But already it has changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world.

  Peter Drucker

  Rights, Important Events, America

  "Post-Capitalist Society". Book by Peter F. Drucker, 1993.

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• All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Country, War, Thinking

  Cosmopolitan, Feb. 1940

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• Join America taught English, an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, that the Bill of Rights is the ultimate insurance policy for a citizen, and that being a citizen is not an entitlement. And we also taught a bit of capitalism.

  Niger Innis

  Rights, America, Understanding

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• Attorney General John Ashcroft is in intensive care. He's suffering from a severe case of pancreatitis, which they can't really figure out because he's not really a drinker. They think he might have picked up some type of infection while wiping his ass with the Bill of Rights.

  Bill Maher

  Thinking, Rights, Suffering

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