Rights And Freedoms Quotes

• They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Happiness, Peace

  Benjamin Franklin, William-Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818”, p.270

  180 Copy quote

  Show source

• The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

  Edmund Burke

  Wisdom, Freedom, Giving Up

  Speech at County Meeting of Buckinghamshire, 1784

  54 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wisdom, Religious, Freedom

  988 Copy quote

• I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Change, Religious, Men

  Letter to Benjamin Rush, 23 Sept. 1800

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Government, Political

  Letter to Archibald Stewart, 23 Dec. 1791

  83 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

  Mark Twain

  Change, Thank You, Memorial Day

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.351, Courier Corporation

  134 Copy quote

  Show source

• Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Gun, British Rule In India

  Mahatma Gandhi, General Press (2014). “My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi”, p.681, GENERAL PRESS

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.

  John Adams

  Gun, Rights, Second Amendment

  24 Copy quote
• 

  To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

  George Mason

  Strength, Peace, Gun

  George Mason's address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 14, 1788.

  110 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

  Samuel Adams

  Rights, Liberty, Together

  Samuel Adams (1946). “Samuel Adams: selections from his writings”

  219 Copy quote

  Show source

• Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Law Courts, Government, Libertarian Party

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

  Patrick Henry

  Death, Sweet, Freedom

  Speech in Virginia Convention, Richmond, Va., 23 Mar. 1775.

  120 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Freedom, Thinking, People

  376 Copy quote

• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Inspiring, Women, 4th Of July

  Declaration of Sentiments, First Woman's Rights

  139 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

  Albert Gallatin

  Gun, Rights, People

  61 Copy quote
• 

  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Strength, Wisdom, Veterans Day

  Letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 Nov. 1787

  227 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.

  Samuel Adams

  Gun, Strong Arms, People

  Debates of the Massachusetts Convention, 1788.

  98 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

  Jimmy Carter

  Inspirational, Motivational, Real

  Jimmy Carter (1995). “Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next Generation”, Puffin

  129 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

  Noam Chomsky

  Inspirational, Relationship, Freedom

  Interview with John Pilger on BBC's "The Late Show", November 25, 1992.

  126 Copy quote

  Show source

• Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Power, Tyrants

  Speech, Canandaigua, N.Y., 4 Aug. 1857

  81 Copy quote

  Show source

• Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Freedom, Independent, Men

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

  116 Copy quote

  Show source

• A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.

  Ramsey Clark

  Rights, Libertarian Party, Giving

  1977 In the NewYork Times, 2 Oct.

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• A political prisoner is someone who is out fighting for his or her people's rights and freedom and is imprisoned for that alone.

  Leonard Peltier

  Fighting, Rights, People

  79 Copy quote

• Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

  Patrick Henry

  Real, Gun, Differences

  Speech on the Federal Constitution, Virginia Ratifying Convention, on June 09, 1788. "The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution". Book edited by Jonathan Elliot, volume 3, p. 168-169, 1836.

  90 Copy quote

  Show source