Individual Rights Quotes

• The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.

  Gerry Spence

  Rights, Erosion, Individual

  Gerry Spence (1989). “With justice for none: destroying an American myth”, Crown

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Change, Happiness

  Declaration of Independence (1776).

  201 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Humor, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.125, Penguin

  151 Copy quote

  Show source

• Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.

  Ayn Rand

  Independent, Men, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

  Eleanor Holmes Norton

  Peace, Ubuntu, Rights

  67 Copy quote

• The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion.

  Charles Evans Hughes

  Opportunity, Order, Rights

  "De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 365". Judicial opinion, 1937.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Law, Tyrants

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.224, Cambridge University Press

  81 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

  Samuel Adams

  Rights, Liberty, Together

  Samuel Adams (1946). “Samuel Adams: selections from his writings”

  225 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.

  Ron Paul

  Rights, Rejection, Historical

  Ron Paul (1987). “Freedom Under Siege”, p.38, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.

  Clarence Thomas

  Philosophy, Believe, Rights

  93 Copy quote

• Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

  Ayn Rand

  Freedom, Rights, Political

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.100, Penguin

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

  Larry Flynt

  Niece, Sheep, Majority Rule

  26 Copy quote

• I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

  Desmond Tutu

  Compassion, Rights, Tables

  1985 NBC News, 9 Jan.

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

  Ayn Rand

  Respect, Mistake, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

  78 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  True Friend, Sacrifice, Rights

  11 Copy quote

• The Declaration of Independence has been called, with some justice, the most revolutionary document in human history, in that it placed the individual person first in the political scheme of things and made the legitimacy of governments and ruling classes contingent on their success at preserving individual rights.

  Alan Bock

  Class, Rights, Government

  4 Copy quote

• Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

  Jimmy Carter

  Inspirational, Motivational, Rights

  "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1978, Book 1: January 1 to June 30, 1978". Book by Jimmy Carter, 1979.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Rights, Morality

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.459, Penguin

  84 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

  John Locke

  Self Esteem, Philosophical, Men

  John Locke, John W. Yolton (1977). “The Locke Reader: Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary”, p.289, CUP Archive

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

  Patrick Henry

  Death, Sweet, Freedom

  Speech in Virginia Convention, Richmond, Va., 23 Mar. 1775.

  127 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

  Jimmy Carter

  Inspirational, Motivational, Real

  Jimmy Carter (1995). “Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next Generation”, Puffin

  134 Copy quote

  Show source

• Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Liberty, Majority

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.100, Penguin

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

  Ayn Rand

  Witty, Humor, Mean

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.305, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Reading, Heart, Law

  295 Copy quote

• An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Motivational, Respect, Kings

  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 16 Apr. 1963

  90 Copy quote

  Show source