Rights Quotes - Page 38

• I wasn't political enough to write articles about myself or go to cocktail parties, meaning that not only has my art been pirated and my intellectual property rights stolen, but my work has been misrepresented.

  Michael Heizer

  Art, Writing, Political

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• The decisions we make about the Internet don't affect just the Internet – they are answers to basic questions about the relationship each citizen has to the government and about the extent to which we trust one another with the full range of fundamental rights granted by the Constitution.

  Mike Godwin

  Government, Decisions We Make, Citizens

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

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• The upside of being a part of a post-civil rights generation is that black folks really are more diverse. But the flash point for that diversity is caught up in Hip Hop. So you have a generation that says, 'I'm gonna wear my sneakers, and I'm gonna wear my pants how I like themThen you have a generation that says, 'I did not get bit by dogs for you to conduct yourself this way. Then the younger generation says, 'Yes, you did. This is what freedom means.'

  Reginald Hudlin

  Dog, Mean, Sneakers

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• Perhaps it will be found that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving, therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Giving, Justice

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1793-1798”, p.165, Cosimo, Inc.

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• From the circumstances of my position, I was often thrown into the society of horse-racers, card-players, fox-hunters, scientific and professional men, and of dignified men; and many a time have I asked myself, in the enthusiastic moment of the death of a fox, the victory of a favorite horse, the issue of a question eloquently argued at the bar, or in the great council of the nation, well, which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer? That of a horse-jockey, a fox-hunter, an orator, or the honest advocate of my country's rights?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Horse, Player

  Thomas Jefferson (1853). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private”, p.389

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• Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of the United States; its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States, in analogous situations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  White, France, United States

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private”, p.503

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• The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.

  Jacques Barzun

  Law, Practice, Creating

  "The Culture We Deserve" by Jacques Barzun, Wesleyan University Press, (p. 97), 1989.

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• If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.

  Simone Weil

  Girl, Sound, Young

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.21, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera, is not a liberal or a conservative value. It's an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on.

  Jerry Falwell

  Gay, Thinking, Yellow

  "The Situation with Tucker Carlson", www.nbcnews.com. August 5, 2005.

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• Unity is the only way in which the people of this country can overthrow the fascists, communists, capitalists, and all the other assholes who claim running a representative government is so difficult. The emphasis has been taken from the Bill of Rights and placed on the type of interpretation of the Constitution that best suits the people in power.

  William Powell

  Running, Country, Taken

  "The Anarchist Cookbook". Book by William Powell, Chapter Three: "Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons", p. 78, 1971.

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• Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastical, high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a complement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, necessary for the public rights of mankind in general and thus for the realization of perpetual peace.

  Immanuel Kant

  Law, Ideas, Community

  "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch". Book by Immanuel Kant, 1795.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Uncles, Struggle

  "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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