Legal Rights Quotes

• I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.

  Tony Campolo

  Couple, Rights, Church

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• Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Heart, Animal, Rights

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• Upon the Constitution, upon the pre-existing legal rights of the People, as understood in this country and in England, I have argued that this House is bound to revive the Petition under debate.

  Caleb Cushing

  Country, Rights, People

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• I have written about the dispossessed, immigrants, the condition of women who do not enjoy the same legal rights as men, the Palestinians who are deprived of their land and condemned to exile.

  Tahar Ben Jelloun

  Men, Rights, Land

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• I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.

  Tony Campolo

  Religious, Couple, Gay

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• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Peace, Kings

  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 16 Apr. 1963

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• No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Respect, Freedom, Equality

  Third Annual Message to Congress, 7 Dec. 1903. "No one is above the law" appears in the U.S. Supreme Court case Mississippi v. Johnson (1867) (arguments of counsel). Even earlier, "no officer ... is above the law" is found in a Kentucky Supreme Court case, Johnston v. Commonwealth (1809).

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• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

  James Madison

  Exercise, Secular Society, Law

  Virginia. General Assembly. House of Delegates, J. W. Randolph, James Madison (1850). “The Virginia Report of 1799-1800: Touching the Alien and Sedition Laws; Together with the Virginia Resolutions of December 21, 1798, Including the Debate and Proceedings Thereon in the House of Delegates of Virginia and Other Documents Illustrative of the Report and Resolutions”, p.136

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• I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Anchors, Law

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.71

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• Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.

  Robert Kennedy

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

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• The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Men, Law Courts, Rights

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928) See Brandeis 1

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• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Change, Happiness

  Declaration of Independence (1776).

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• But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Government, Giving

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.18, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• Any home where there is love constitutes a family and all families should have the same legal rights, including the right to marry and have or adopt children. Why shouldn't gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else?

  Elizabeth Taylor

  Children, Home, Gay

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• Teach the legal rights of trees, the nobility of hills; respect the beauty of singularity, the value of solitude.

  Josephine Winslow Johnson

  Rights, Tree, Solitude

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• The king is as much bound by his oath not to infringe the legal rights of the people, as the people are bound to yield subjection to him. From whence it follows that as soon as the prince sets himself above the law, he loses the king in the tyrant. He does, to all intents and purposes, un-king himself.

  Jonathan Mayhew

  Kings, Yield, Rights

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• Commerce is entitled to a complete and efficient protection in all its legal rights, but the moment it presumes to control a country, or to substitute its fluctuating expedients for the high principles of natural justice that ought to lie at the root of every political system, it should be frowned on, and rebuked.

  James F. Cooper

  Country, Lying, Law

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• Principle I: Legal rights are presumptive rights.

  William Ernest Hocking

  Rights, Principles

  "Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights". Book by William Ernest Hocking, Ch. VI : Presumptive Rights, p. 58, 1926.

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• Whenever you're going after something that belongs to you, anyone who's depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal.

  Malcolm X

  Law, Rights, Effort

  "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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• 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, Rights

  "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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• If you have some legally sanctioned relationship with the bundle of legal rights traditionally belonging to marriage and governing authority has slapped a label on it, whether it is civil union or domestic partnership or whatever label it's given, it is nonetheless tantamount to marriage.

  Lance B. Wickman

  Rights, Unions, Labels

  Source: www.mormonnewsroom.org

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• Marriage would change hardly anything between us, except that we would end our arguments in a much more satisfying way. And of course I would have extensive legal rights over your body, your property, and all your individual freedoms, but I don't see what's so alarming about that.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Rights, Body, Way

  Lisa Kleypas (2010). “Married by Morning”, p.252, St. Martin's Press

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• It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others.

  James Madison

  Order, Rights, Doubt

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• There's a a right to privacy for all individuals and all who have legal rights - and that includes the unborn. As an obstetrician, if I cause any harm to a fetus, I will be sued. If someone kills or harms a fetus they're liable in a court of law.

  Ron Paul

  Rights, Law, Fetus

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Every year Swedish society produces a new generation of threatened women who can testify to the lack of legal rights and the lukewarm interest shown by the police and other authorities.

  Steig Larsson

  Rights, Years, Police

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