Natural Rights Quotes - Page 2

• Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever

  Joseph Priestley

  Men, Rights, Natural

  'An Essay on the First Principles of Government' (1768) pt. 1

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• Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of ... the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and ernter into another.... Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?

  Samuel Adams

  Religious, Taken, Men

  "The Rights of the Colonists". The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, history.hanover.edu. November 20, 1772.

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• [If you understood the natural rights of mankind,] [y]ou would be convinced that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that, and cannot be wrested from any people without the most manifest violation of justice.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Rights, Race, People

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• I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Civil Rights, Separation Of Church And State

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (1940). “John Dewey Presents the Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Natural, Declaration

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• Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.

  William H. Seward

  Rights, Hair, Natural

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• Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Simple, Rights, Nonsense

  Anarchical Fallacies art. 2 (1816)

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• The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Rights, Law

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• [O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Religion, Natural

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• The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

  James Madison

  Giving, Liberty, Protection

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• It's a difficult position. Do you endanger your child to fight for the right thing, or do you keep your mouth shut and let your child grow up in a world where their natural rights are stripped away from them?

  Jamie Bell

  Children, Growing Up, Fighting

  "Jamie Bell Talks Turn, Coming to Television, Physical Challenges, Researching the Historical Setting, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. April 18, 2014.

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• A human being has no natural rights of any nature.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Rights, Natural, Humans

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.95, Penguin

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• In this dilemma they evolved the theory of natural rights. If 'natural rights' means anything it means that the individual rights are to be determined by the conduct of Nature. But Nature knows nothing about rights in the sense of human conception.

  Clarence Darrow

  Mean, Rights, Determined

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.58, Lulu.com

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• Just as the white man and every other person on this earth has God-given rights, natural rights, civil rights, any kind of rights that you can think of, when it comes to defending himself, black people - we should have the right to defend ourselves also.

  Malcolm X

  Men, Thinking, Rights

  Source: teachingamericanhistory.org

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• Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people's natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they - the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate - are themselves the government.

  Robert Higgs

  Night, Government, Rights

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• ... the modern state masks itself in moral ideologies which obscure its actual conduct. One of the most compelling and insidious of these ideologies is the doctrine of natural rights. It was to secure these rights that the modern state was invented in the first place, and it is impossible, especially for Americans, not to be seduced by the doctrine. But it is nonetheless a philosophical superstition.

  Donald Livingston

  Philosophical, Rights, Doctrine

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• The State, on the other hand, 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 J. Nock

  Rights, Ideas, Justice

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock (p. 49), 1935.

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• In speaking of natural rights, therefore, it is essential to remember that these alleged rights have no political force whatsoever, unless recognized and enforced by the state.

  Charles Edward Merriam

  Rights, Political, Essentials

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• We were born with natural rights. We don't need civil rights. [African-Americans] don't need civil rights. They don't need them. They have inalienable rights granted by God in the Constitution. I mean, I'm discriminated against all the time. I don't care. It doesn't bother me. [I'm discriminated against] because I'm old. I'm too old to get a job as a game show host. They say, well, the guy's 71 and in five years he'll be 76. And I'm a one per center, and I'm absolutely discriminated against as a one per center.

  Chuck Woolery

  Jobs, Mean, Rights

  "Michele Bachmann At CPAC: Former GOP Candidate Slams Prop 8 Ruling, Meets Chuck Woolery" by Michelangelo Signorile, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 10, 2012.

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• The rights [to religious freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind, and ... if any act shall be ... passed to repeal [an act granting those rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Rights, Natural

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• To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.

  Carl L. Becker

  Philosophy, Rights, Independence

  Carl L. Becker (2013). “Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas”, p.188, Vintage

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• It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction - to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.

  George Washington

  Patriotic, Exercise, Rights

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1792). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”, p.93

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• If two individuals enter into a contract to commit trespass, theft, robbery or murder upon a third, the contract is unlawful and void, simply because it is a contract to violate natural justice, or men's natural rights.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Rights, Two

  Lysander Spooner (1847). “The unconstitutionality of slavery: including parts first and second”, p.8

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• We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off.

  John Trudell

  Ignorance, Reality, Rights

  John Trudell (1994). “Stickman: John Trudell Poems, Lyrics, Talks, a Conversation”

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• A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Married, Natural

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

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