Constitutional Rights Quotes - Page 2

• We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist." You never hear a real American talk like that.

  Frank Hague

  Real, Men, Rights

  Speech to the Jersey City Chamber of Commerce (12 January 1938), as quoted in "The Last Three Miles : Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway" by Steven Hart, (p. 137), 2007.

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• To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Political, Fields

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.556

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• Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

  Pete Stark

  Rights, Government, Abuse

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• A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Friends, Freedom, War

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.898, Best Books on

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• When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

  William O. Douglas

  Exercise, Rights, Hands

  "Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 27, 1953.

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• I believe strongly that we can protect our people without undermining our constitutional rights and I worry very, very much about the huge attacks on privacy that we have seen in recent years - both from the government and the private sector. I worry that we are moving toward an Orwellian society, and this is something I will oppose as vigorously as I can.

  Bernie Sanders

  Believe, Moving, Rights

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. May 19, 2015.

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• If Americans loved judicial activism, liberals wouldn't be lying about what it is. Judicial activism means making up constitutional rights in order to strike down laws the justices don't like based on their personal preferences. It's not judicial activism to strike down laws because they violate the Constitution.

  Ann Coulter

  Lying, Mean, Rights

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• What makes America great is peaceful protests and exercising your constitutional rights.

  Matthew Dowd

  Exercise, Rights, America

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.

  Judith Butler

  Rights, Links, Way

  "Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on US State Terrorism". Book by Jon Bailes and Cihan Aksan, November 27, 2012.

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• Censorship does not interfere with the constitutional rights of every American to sit alone in a dark room in the nude and cuss.

  Pat Paulsen

  Dark, Rights, Doe

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• No system of criminal justice can, or should, survive if it comes to depend for its continued effectiveness on the citizens' abdication through unawareness of their constitutional rights. No system worth preserving should have to fear that if an accused is permitted to consult with a lawyer, he will become aware of, and exercise, these rights.

  Arthur Goldberg

  Exercise, Rights, Should Have

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• Judges who take the law into their own hands, who make up constitutional 'rights' in order to strike down laws they oppose, undermine the people's right to have their values shape public policy and define the culture.

  Orrin Hatch

  Rights, Hands, Order

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• For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of the University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement.

  Walter E. Williams

  Betrayal, Struggle, Rights

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• We are so considerate of the minute constitutional rights and even of the political feelings and influence of people whom we have every reason to anticipate with preventive action!... The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.

  Westbrook Pegler

  Men, Rights, California

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• The more that voting is glorified as a panacea, the more lackadaisical people become about preserving their constitutional rights.

  James Bovard

  Rights, People, Voting

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• There is nobody that I know who believes that Bank of America is a human being who should be entitled for the same constitutional rights that the people of our country are.

  Bernie Sanders

  Country, Believe, Rights

  "Interview with Senator Bernie Sanders". "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer, www.realclearpolitics.com. December 12, 2011.

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• President Bush has asserted the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on any American without a warrant in the name of fighting terrorism. He has asserted presidential power beyond stated constitutional rights, and there is no Republican gutsy enough to call his hand.

  Helen Thomas

  Fighting, Names, Rights

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• [There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens.

  Albert Einstein

  War, Rights, Political

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• I strongly object to the fact that so many newspapers have given the American public and the world the impression that I have only two alternatives in taking this stand: either I go to jail or go to the Army. There is another alternative and that alternative is justice. If justice prevails, if my Constitutional rights are upheld, I will be forced to go neither to the Army nor jail. In the end I am confident that justice will come my way for the truth must eventually prevail.

  Muhammad Ali

  Army, Rights, Two

  Muhammad Ali, Hana Yasmeen Ali (2013). “The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey”, p.89, Simon and Schuster

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• The entire future of marriage rests with Justice Anthony Kennedy, the man who declared in Citizens United that corporations are people with constitutional rights. I just hope he doesn't do anything rash, like declare that homosexuals are people with constitutional rights.

  Stephen Colbert

  Men, Rights, Justice

  "Colbert Takes On DOMA Supreme Court Decision, Chief Justice Roberts’ Gay Cousin". www.huffingtonpost.com. March 29, 2013.

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• Whether I am or am not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.

  Paul Robeson

  Rights, Political, Citizens

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• The police have no right to do what they have been doing to the protesters. Their behavior has been designed to chill the protester's constitutional rights. This judge's ruling is wonderful.

  James Lafferty

  Rights, Judging, Police

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• Students and invited speakers do not shed their constitutional rights when they step up to the graduation podium. Expressing faith in God does not disqualify a student from delivering a graduation message. Being designated as valedictorian or salutatorian is an honor, and students chosen for that honor should be free to share their gratitude to God with their fellow students and family members.

  Mathew Staver

  Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

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• The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question, with the actual and threatened aggressions of the Northern States and a portion of their people, upon the well-defined constitutional rights of the Southern citizens; the rapid growth and increase, in all the elements of power, of a purely sectional party.

  Isham G. Harris

  War, Party, Rights

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• Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve to guarantee much more than what could be called the bourgeois conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a "free" man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of the individual.

  Theodore Kaczynski

  Men, Rights, Needs

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