Political Rights Quotes

• We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Inspiring, Daughter, Strong Women

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Gage, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Ida H. Harper (2017). “THE HISTORY OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE - Complete 6 Volumes (Illustrated): Everything You Need to Know about the Biggest Victory of Women’s Rights and Equality in the United States – Written By the Greatest Social Activists, Abolitionists & Suffragists”, p.2594, e-artnow

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

  James Madison

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Rights

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.46

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• For most of the world, civil and political rights... come as luxuries that are far away in the future.

  Andrew Young

  Rights, Luxury, Political

  8 Copy quote

• The right to unite freely and to separate freely is the first and most important of all political rights.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Rights, Political, Important

  39 Copy quote

• Liberalism is that principle of political rights, according to which the public authority, in spite of being all-powerful, limits itself and attempts, even at ist own expense, to leave room in the state over which it rules for those to live who neither think nor feel as it does, that is to say as do the stronger, the majority.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Powerful, Thinking, Rights

  4 Copy quote

• In proportion as the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected ruler's increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals.

  Paul Lafargue

  Rights, Numbers, Political

  6 Copy quote

• Islam never differentiates between men and women as regards political rights and puts them on an equal footing. However, even if a woman is qualified for leadership, when it comes to posts of authority such as presidency, Muslim scholars unanimously agree that it is impermissible for a woman to assume such a post because in this case she is in charge of her people's affairs.

  Yusuf al-Qaradawi

  Men, Rights, People

  19 Copy quote

• In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political death.

  Alice Meynell

  Party, Rights, Blood

  4 Copy quote

• the right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right ... Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.

  Hannah Arendt

  Home, Pursuit Of Happiness, Rights

  Hannah Arendt (2009). “Responsibility and Judgment”, p.203, Schocken

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• You may twist the word freedom as long as you please, but at last it comes to quiet enjoyment of your own property, or it comes to nothing. Why do men want any of those things that are called political rights and privileges? Why do they, for instance, want to vote at elections for members of parliament? Oh! Because they shall then have an influence over the conduct of those members. And of what use is that? Oh! Then they will prevent the members from doing wrong.

  William Cobbett

  Men, Rights, Long

  William Cobbett (2012). “A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland”, p.231, TAN Books

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• By assigning his political rights to the state the individual also delegates his social responsibilities to it: he asks the state to relieve him of the burden of caring for the poor precisely as he asks for protection against criminals. The difference between pauper and criminal disappears - both stand outside society.

  Hannah Arendt

  Responsibility, Caring, Rights

  6 Copy quote

• The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Taken, Party, Responsibility

  Letter to Charles F. Gardner, August 9, 1924.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Sex, Rights, Government

  "An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting: At the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872" by Susan B. Anthony, Rochester N.Y.: Daily democrat & chronicle book print, 1874.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's what [Abraham] Lincoln said. "The white man will always be above the black man. I don't want them to run for office, or have political rights, or vote. I want them to go back to Africa."

  Bill Ayers

  Running, Men, Rights

  Source: thepointmag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Baltic republics have invented something totally new. Do you know what? They use the word 'non-citizens' for people who have been living for decades in the territory of Baltic states and have been deprived of a number of political rights. They cannot participate in the election campaigns; they have limited political and social rights. Everybody keeps quiet about it, as if this is the way it should be. Of course, this cannot but cause a certain reaction.

  Vladimir Putin

  Numbers, Rights, People

  "Interview to American TV channel CBS and PBS". Interview with Charlie Rose, en.kremlin.ru. September 29, 2015.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thomas Jefferson understood the greater purpose of the liberty that our Founding Fathers sought during the creation of our Nation. Although it was against the British that the colonists fought for political rights, the true source of the rights of man was clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote that all humans are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . . It was self-evident to him that denying these rights was wrong and that he and others must struggle to win what was theirs.

  William J. Clinton

  Father, Struggle, Winning

  5 Copy quote

• The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.

  Booker T. Washington

  Character, Rights, Political

  Booker T. Washington (2013). “A Will to Be Free”, p.129, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

  James Madison

  Passion, Government, Democracies Have

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Henry Barton Dawson (1864). “The Fœderalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favor of the New Constitution, as Agreed Upon by the Fœderal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes”, p.60, New York : C. Scribner ; London : Sampson Low

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we speak of the origin of western democracy it's precisely here, in this territory that the modern definition of democracy first emerged in city/states known now as Greece. This was coming from a society in which 30 thousand citizens had rights and 300 thousand were slaves and citizens without rights that lived in this territory. So that was the concept of western democracy; some citizens had the prerogative of exerting their civil and political rights while the others had none.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Cities, Rights, Political

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old "laissez faire" school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.

  William Howard Taft

  School, Rights, Government

  5 Copy quote

• The presence of the blacks is the greatest evil that threatens the United States. They increase, in the Gulf States, faster than do the whites. They cannot be kept for ever in slavery, since the tendencies of the modern world run strongly the other way. They cannot be absorbed into the white population, for the whites will not intermarry with them, not even in the North where they have been free for two generations. Once freed, they would be more dangerous than now, because they would not long submit to be debarred from political rights. A terrible struggle would ensue.

  James Bryce

  Running, Struggle, Two

  12 Copy quote

• Private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

  Albert Einstein

  Intelligent, Rights, Political

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.11, Open Road Media

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Sacrifice, Rights, Justice

  Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). “Freedom from fear: and other writings”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Rights, Justice

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.102, Chicago Review Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• While the Right of Suffrage is conceded to thousands notoriously ignorant, vicious, and drunken, ... a Constitutional denial to Black men, as such, of Political Rights freely secured to White men, is monstrously unjust and irrational.

  Horace Greeley

  Men, Rights, White Man

  29 Copy quote