Individual Rights Quotes - Page 4

• 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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• My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state

  Jim Garrison

  Country, Book, Law

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• By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments-that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.

  John Hospers

  Life, Rights, Government

  John Hospers (1971). “Libertarianism: a political philosophy for tomorrow”

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• Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Laissez Faire Capitalism, Recognition

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.35, Penguin

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• The government's only proper job is to protect individual rights against violence by force or fraud ... to protect men from foreign invaders ... to settle disputes among men according to objective laws ... The greatness of the Founding Fathers was how well they understood this issue and how close some of them came to understanding it perfectly.

  Ayn Rand

  Jobs, Father, Greatness

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• America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more-and nothing less. The rest-everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything 'noble and just,' and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history-was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Usa, America

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.37, Penguin

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• Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

  Robert Nozick

  Strong, Rights, What If

  Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”

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• There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept 'just a few controls' is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Government, Principles

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.65, Penguin

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• Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace... One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being... The people owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Rights, Government, People

  "Anarcho-Syndicalism" by Rudolf Rocker, (Ch. 5), 1938.

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• A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization.

  Matthew Woodring Stover

  Pursuit Of Happiness, Rights, Civilization

  Matthew Woodring Stover (2008). “Blade of Tyshalle”, p.102, Del Rey

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• The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less that the right to speak out or the right to travel is, in truth, a "personal" right.

  Potter Stewart

  Truth, Speaks Out, Law

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• All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion, have the full protection of the guarantees [of the First Amendment].

  William J. Brennan

  Ideas, Justice, Religion

  Roth v. United States (1957)

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• The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives - the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

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• My immediate priorities are peace and stability. I want to differentiate between stability and security: Stability comes from the hearts of people and acceptance of the judicial system. Security comes from the barrel of a gun and the threat of the use of force. We're seeing violence at an unprecedented level. We've become numb to bloodletting. Enduring peace cannot come unless we build a state that can guarantee our individual rights and obligations.

  Ashraf Ghani

  Heart, Acceptance, Gun

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• My own sense as an American is that we have begun to experience the disadvantages of framing virtually all moral issues in terms of individual rights. American history has consisted of swings back and forth between rights talk on the one hand and talk of duties, responsibilities, and the common good on the other hand. Recent decades have seen a big swing toward rights, and conceived in very individualistic terms, which hasn't always been the case even with rights.

  David Wong

  Responsibility, Moral, Common

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

  Penn Jillette

  Kids, Rights, Democracy

  Penn Jillette (2012). “God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales”, p.151, Simon and Schuster

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• I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.

  Penn Jillette

  Believe, Rights, Causes

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• Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public health,' 'public good,' 'public welfare,' and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.

  Lysander Spooner

  Rights, Numbers, Welfare

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

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• In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens.

  Dick Durbin

  Taken, Rights, President

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'

  Lysander Spooner

  Rights, Individual, Distinguished

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

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• Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers.

  John Ashcroft

  Father, Gun, Rights

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• It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth.

  James Madison

  Blow, Order, Rights

  James Madison (1867). “1829-1836”, p.425

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• He was a lifelong Republican, but over the years, Harry Blackmun built a reputation as a liberal, sometimes defiant Justice, whose fierce protection of individual rights led some to anoint him the moral conscience of the court.

  Judy Woodruff

  Years, Rights, Justice

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• Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society.

  Lawrence Kohlberg

  Rights, Action, Individual

  Lawrence Kohlberg (1973). “Collected papers on moral development and moral education”

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• One of the interesting things about the ancient Greeks is that they really didn't have our conception of individual rights. They didn't have our conception of all lives matters. And it was really was true for them, that certain lives matter a lot more than others. It didn't dawn on them that all lives, although different, can be lives of equal mattering. And that is actually something a huge ethical lesson.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Rights, Interesting, Greek

  "What Do We Have To Teach Plato?". "Here And Now" with Jeremy Hobson, news.stlpublicradio.org. April 22, 2014.

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