Rights Quotes - Page 36

• Unlawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasure—its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave forever.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Forever, Poison, Pleasure

  1857 The Professor, ch.20.

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• It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State, - ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios, - burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control.

  Lord Acton

  Latin, Fate, Men

  "The History of Freedom in Antiquity". Lord Acton's opening statement of his speech on February 28, 1877; later quoted in "The History of Freedom and Other Essays" edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, 1907.

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• I'm pro-choice. I'm pro-gay rights.

  Rudy Giuliani

  Gay, Choices, Gay Rights

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.

  Bill Moyers

  Father, Mean, Responsibility

  "For America's Sake". Speech on December 12, 2006. "Moyers on Democracy". Book by Bill D. Moyers, p. 17, 2008.

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• I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Spiritual, Men, Long

  Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, www.columbia.edu. December 29, 1930.

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• I desire not to keep my place in this government an hour longer than I may preserve England in its just rights, and may protect the people of God in such a just liberty of their consciences.

  Oliver Cromwell

  Government, People, Desire

  Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Carlyle (1857). “Letters and Speeches”, p.84

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• We study the glory of God, and the honour and liberty of parliament, for which we unanimously fight, without seeking our own interests... I profess I could never satisfy myself on the justness of this war, but from the authority of the parliament to maintain itself in its rights; and in this cause I hope to prove myself an honest man and single-hearted.

  Oliver Cromwell

  War, Fighting, Men

  Oliver Cromwell (18??). “Oliver Cromwell's letters & speeches: with elucidations”

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• In the Islamic Republic the rights of the religious minorities are respectfully regarded.

  Ruhollah Khomeini

  Religious, Islamic, Minorities

  Interview for Austrian television in Paris (November 6, 1978), as quoted in "Democracy? I meant theocracy - The most truthful individual in recent history" by Dr. Jalal Matini and Farhad Mafie in "The Iranian", August 5, 2003.

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• Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Men, Hands, Individuality

  "The Limits of State Action". Book by David Sidorsky. Chapter 2, 1792.

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• I have pleaded (labor's) case, not in the quavering tones of a feeble mendicant asking alms, but in the thundering voice of the captain of a mighty host, demanding the rights to which free men are entitled.

  John L. Lewis

  Men, Voice, Asking

  Speech at United Mine Workers convention at Indianapolis in March 1940. "John L. Lewis: A Biography". Book by Melvyn Dubofsky, p. 278, 1986.

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• It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. If they did so, they couldn't be reelected.

  Jimmy Carter

  Suicidal, Israel, Law

  "Jimmy Carter takes on Israel’s Apartheid Policies and the Pro-Israeli Lobby in the US". Interview with Nathan Gardels, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 12, 2006.

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• Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it's spilt over for women's rights; it's split over for worker's rights and so forth.

  Cornel West

  America, People, Black

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I'm not pessimistic, because poor people tend to bounce back. We've been through worse than this - working people been through worse than this. We've got slavery and Jim Crow. We've got workers with no rights up until `35. We're going to bounce back. We are resilient, resisting people. So, it's not pessimism, but it is blues-like. It's not optimistic. We're just prisoners of hope, that's all.

  Cornel West

  Optimistic, People, Crow

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I suggest that a culture adopting an alphabet would denigrate right hemispheric values because the alphabet is a left hemispheric mode of reception. And this right hemispheric denigration would manifest in two principal ways: Women's rights would be taken away, and images would be declared abominations.

  Leonard Shlain

  Taken, Two, Way

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• We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.

  Ai Weiwei

  Country, Sacrifice, People

  "David Cameron, as you visit China please listen to us" by Ai Weiwei, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2010.

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• As an author, you can't expect a movie to be an illustration of the book. If that's what you hope for, you shouldn't sell the rights.

  Bernhard Schlink

  Book, Illustration, Ifs

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• We thought it was only in science fiction that things created by humans could actually take over what is inherently our human heritage. But Thom Hartmann shows how we've already let that happen on a frightening scale - not in Frankenstein's monsters or Kubrick's creeping computer Hal - but in the corporations that present their friendly 'faces' to us as if we have nothing to fear from this ultimate usurpation of our rights as real humans.

  Ed Ayres

  Real, Friendly, Faces

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• Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.

  Philip K. Howard

  Liberty, Democracy, Roles

  Philip K. Howard (2011). “The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America”, p.171, Random House

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• If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  People, Giving, Pay

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.82, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Passion, Men, Soul

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.191, Cambridge University Press

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• It is still in the lap of the gods whether a society can succeed which is based on "civil liberties and human rights" conceived as I have tried to describe them; but of one thing at least we may be sure: the alternatives that have so far appeared have been immeasurably worse.

  Learned Hand

  Liberty, Alternatives, May

  Learned Hand (1955). “A fanfare for Prometheus”

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• Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all the others knew they were giving rights to vulgarity. But in so doing in addition to caring for man's well-being they were providing rights for themselves.

  Allan Bloom

  Caring, Men, Giving

  "Giants and Dwarfs". Book by Allan Bloom. Chapter: "Commerce and Culture," p. 289, 1990.

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• But the novels of women were not affected only by the necessarily narrow range of the writer's experience. They showed, at least in the nineteenth century, another characteristic which may be traced to the writer's sex. In Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer's character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman's presence of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sex, Character, May

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.245, OUP Oxford

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• Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

  Malcolm X

  Believe, Law, Justice

  "The Ballot or The Bullet (Cleveland Version)". Malcolm X's speech at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964) as quoted in "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements" edited by George Breitman (pp. 23-44), 1965.

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• They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they've known ever since it happened, and they've done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain.

  Malcolm X

  Blood, Done, Bills

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