Individual Rights Quotes - Page 4

• Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Rights, Individual

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.191, Penguin

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• It should go without saying that even the most narrowly construed eminent-domain power would violate individual rights. Either a person owns his legitimately acquired property or he does not.

  Sheldon Richman

  Rights, Doe, Eminent Domain

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• The fact that the majority wants something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don't want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, it's not really a very good idea. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up on the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

  Penn Jillette

  Kids, Gun, Rights

  Penn Jillette (2012). “God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales”, p.151, Simon and Schuster

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• I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.

  Neil Peart

  Believe, Responsibility, Rights

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• I'm concerned about the role the court will play in protecting individual rights in this and the next century.

  Dianne Feinstein

  Rights, Play, Roles

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• How do we have a society that maximizes peace, civility and well-being for everyone? How do we have a system of individual rights in which people succeed by helping others improve their lives? We're a long way from that. So what, I mean, we got more to learn than we know, to me. So we need better ideas.

  Charles Koch

  Mean, Helping Others, Rights

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• People come to have different moral beliefs because they have different non-moral beliefs about relevant facts. People are disposed to believe whatever justifies the practices and institutions that benefit them. But I argue that not all moral differences can be explained away in such a fashion. Some of the most profound disagreements come from differences in priority assigned to values such as relationship and community on the one hand, and individual rights and personal autonomy for the individual, on the other hand.

  David Wong

  Fashion, Believe, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The 'nations,' as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such 'nations.' ... Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have intrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades.

  Lysander Spooner

  Kings, Moon, Men

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

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• Norms appearing in the form of law entitle actors to exercise their rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which of these laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individual rights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually compatible.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Exercise, Rights, Law

  "Between Facts and Norms". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1992.

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• Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

  Penn Jillette

  Kids, Rights, Democracy

  Penn Jillette (2012). “God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales”, p.151, Simon and Schuster

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• Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'

  Lysander Spooner

  Rights, Individual, Distinguished

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

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• It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth.

  James Madison

  Blow, Order, Rights

  James Madison (1867). “1829-1836”, p.425

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• He was a lifelong Republican, but over the years, Harry Blackmun built a reputation as a liberal, sometimes defiant Justice, whose fierce protection of individual rights led some to anoint him the moral conscience of the court.

  Judy Woodruff

  Years, Rights, Justice

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• Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society.

  Lawrence Kohlberg

  Rights, Action, Individual

  Lawrence Kohlberg (1973). “Collected papers on moral development and moral education”

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• One of the interesting things about the ancient Greeks is that they really didn't have our conception of individual rights. They didn't have our conception of all lives matters. And it was really was true for them, that certain lives matter a lot more than others. It didn't dawn on them that all lives, although different, can be lives of equal mattering. And that is actually something a huge ethical lesson.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Rights, Interesting, Greek

  "What Do We Have To Teach Plato?". "Here And Now" with Jeremy Hobson, news.stlpublicradio.org. April 22, 2014.

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• My immediate priorities are peace and stability. I want to differentiate between stability and security: Stability comes from the hearts of people and acceptance of the judicial system. Security comes from the barrel of a gun and the threat of the use of force. We're seeing violence at an unprecedented level. We've become numb to bloodletting. Enduring peace cannot come unless we build a state that can guarantee our individual rights and obligations.

  Ashraf Ghani

  Heart, Acceptance, Gun

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Striking a balance in favor of individual rights has always been the right decision for us and that it remains so even when technology gives us new ways to exercise those rights. Individual liberty has never weakened us; freedom of speech, enhanced by the Net, will only make us stronger.

  Mike Godwin

  Exercise, Technology, Rights

  Mike Godwin (1998). “Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age”, Crown Business

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• Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.

  Paul Kurtz

  Religious, Party, Communication

  Paul Kurtz (1983). “In defense of secular humanism”, Prometheus Books

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• A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization.

  Matthew Woodring Stover

  Pursuit Of Happiness, Rights, Civilization

  Matthew Woodring Stover (2008). “Blade of Tyshalle”, p.102, Del Rey

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• Still - and for all Obama's heavy hinting to the contrary - Islam has no "human rights." The ideas of individual rights and the dignity of man are distinctly Western, an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. And while dialogue is dignified; dhimmitude is not, even if it achieves a desired, if temporary, effect.

  Ilana Mercer

  Men, Rights, Ideas

  "B. Hussein in History Wonderland" by Ilana Mercer, www.ilanamercer.com. August 21, 2009.

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• Just as little can we afford to follow the doctrinaires of an impossible - and incidentally of a highly undesirable - social revolution which, in destroying individual rights - including property rights - and the family, would destroy the two chief agents in the advance of mankind, and the two chief reasons why either the advance or the preservation of mankind is worthwhile.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Rights, Two, Agents

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “African and European Addresses”, p.182, tredition

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• The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives - the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Men, Thinking

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

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• We need to insist on fathers and mothers sharing the care of their offspring as well as the opportunity to enjoy the fulfillment of individual rights.

  Mary Frances Berry

  Mother, Father, Opportunity

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• The Right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society.

  Thomas I. Emerson

  Religion, Democracy, Principles

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• Freedom of conscience is a natural right, both antecedent and superior to all human laws and institutions whatever; a right which laws never gave and a right which laws can never take away.

  John Goodwin

  Responsibility, Law, Justice

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