Natural Rights Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• The 16th Amendment corroded the American concept of natural rights; ultimately reduced the American citizen to a status of subject, so much so that he is not aware of it; enhanced Executive power to the point of reducing Congress to innocuity; and enabled the central government to bribe the states, once independent units, into subservience. No kingship in the history of the world ever exercised more power than our Presidency, or had more of the people's wealth at its disposal.

  Frank Chodorov

  Independent, Rights, Government

  Frank Chodorov (2007). “Income Tax: Root of All Evil”, p.46, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Nothing in the Constitution of the United States gives the Congress or the Executive Branch the power to attempt the task of regulating climate, as impossible as that would be under any realistic scenarios. No national security emergency exists relative to climate that would warrant increased governmental control of energy production. Today's Americans have an obligation to future Americans to elect leaders who do not believe in an omnipotent government but believe, as did the Founders, in limited government, and in the preservation of liberty and the natural rights of the people.

  Harrison Schmitt

  Believe, Rights, Government

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• In your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Sex, Rights, Government

  "An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting: At the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872" by Susan B. Anthony, Rochester N.Y.: Daily democrat & chronicle book print, 1874.

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• The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely, and pursue that which motivates us not because man or some government says so, but because these are God-given natural rights.

  Mark Levin

  Men, Rights, Conservative

  Mark R. Levin (2009). “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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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.

  George Washington

  Exercise, Rights, Class

  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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• Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Liberty, Economic, Economy

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Everyone has an equal and absolute right to sovereignty over his own body, his own property, and his own life, and to pursue his own happiness in any way that he chooses. No one has the authority to grant rights to anyone else, because human beings already possess all natural rights at birth. These rights include both personal and economic freedoms, and the only way they can be lost is if someone takes them away by force. The only right that an individual does not naturally possess is the right to violate someone else's liberty.

  Robert Ringer

  Rights, Liberty, Doe

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• Ours is a representative republic with a Constitution in which is recognized the natural law and the natural rights of man. It is a republic with a spiritual foundation characterized by freedom - freedom for the individual and for his society.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Spiritual, Men, Rights

  Ezra Taft Benson (1969). “An enemy hath done this”

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• [Louis Brandeis] believes in natural rights of speech and liberty and the right to pursue happiness.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  Believe, Rights, Liberty

  Source: www.slate.com

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• For [Louis] Brandeis, it's not a technical question of channeling what would James Madison say. It's how do we take these inherent human natural rights of liberty and translate them into an age of new technolog

  Jeffrey Rosen

  Rights, Age, Liberty

  Source: www.slate.com

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• Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

  Edward Snowden

  Fall, Rights, Giving

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. May 21, 2015.

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• I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.

  Thomas Paine

  Country, War, Rights

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The American Crisis”, p.154

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• Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Wise, Men, Rights

  Alexander Hamilton, John Church Hamilton (1850). “The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc”, p.43

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• Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

  William Blackstone

  Men, Rights, Law

  William Blackstone (1922). “Commentaries on the Laws of England: In Four Books”, p.45, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• How glorious, then, is the prospect, the reverse of all the past, which is now opening upon us, and upon the world. Government, we may now expect to see, not only in theory and in books but in actual practice, calculated for the general good, and taking no more upon it than the general good requires, leaving all men the enjoyment of as many of their natural rights as possible, and no more interfering with matters of religion, with men's notions concerning God, and a future state, than with philosophy, or medicine.

  Joseph Priestley

  Philosophy, Book, Past

  Joseph Priestley (1791). “Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France, &c”, p.145, Birmingham

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• How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.

  Jefferson Davis

  Rights, Natural, Idle

  Jefferson Davis (1860). “Relations of states: Speech of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi”, p.4

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• A natural right in the strict sense is that which is naturally under a person's control, his body with its faculties of movement, feeling, thought, and speech. By extension, a natural right is what a person brings under his control without violating any other person's natural rights.

  Frank Van Dun

  Rights, Feelings, Movement

  "Natural Law, Liberalism and Christianity". Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume 15, no. 3, 2001.

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• And these great natural rights may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property; because as there is no other known method of compulsion, or of abridging man's natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense.

  William Blackstone

  Wisdom, Men, Rights

  Sir William BLACKSTONE, Samuel Warren (1856). “Blackstone's Commentaries systematically abridged and adapted to the existing state of the law and constitution, with great additions. By Samuel Warren”, p.101

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• It is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Wisdom, Rights, Confusion

  Pope Leo XIII (1990). “A Light in the Heavens: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII”, p.148, TAN Books

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• One of the greatest disasters that happened to modern civilization was for democracy to inscribe "liberty" on its banners instead of "justice." Because "liberty" was considered the ideal it was not long until some men interpreted it as meaning "freedom from justice"; then when religion and decent government attempted to bring them back to justice, organized into "freedom groups" they protested that their constitutional and natural rights were being violated.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Men, Rights

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• The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers 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. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Law, Errors

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

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• First there is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed, and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation.

  Theodore Parker

  Men, Rights, Ideas

  Theodore Parker (1867). “Additional Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons”, p.25

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• From a biological viewpoint, patriarchal religion denied women the natural rights of every other mammalian female: the right to choose her stud, to control the circumstances of her mating, to occupy and govern her own nest, or to refuse all males when preoccupied with the important business of raising her young.

  Barbara G. Walker

  Women, Rights, Religion

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• It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Rights, Government

  Thomas Jefferson (1943). “Thomas Jefferson: selections from his writings edited, with an introduction”

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