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
As far as military necessity will permit, religiously respect the constitutional rights of all. — George B. McClellan
Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights — Thomas Jefferson
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference. — Thomas Jefferson
The right to happiness is fundamental. — Anna Pavlova
No Ordinary American Cares About Their Constitutional Rights — Joe Biden
The only thing that counts is the right to know, to speak, to think - that, and the sanctity of the courts. Otherwise it's not America. — Edward R. Murrow
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority. — Ayn Rand
the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. — Thomas Jefferson
I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen. — Nat King Cole
Your rights matter, because you never know when you're going to need them. — Edward Snowden
The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights -- the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others. — Walter Bagehot
Yes, we do defend our office as we do defend our homes. This is a constitutional right everybody has, and nothing's funny about that. The only reason they get mad at the Black Panther Party when you do it is for the simple reason that we're political. — Fred Hampton
Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip top if you must, but take the step.
Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. — John Marshall Harlan
The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that marriage is one of the most fundamental rights that we have as Americans under our Constitution. — Ted Olson
On this day, when we're celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage - to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it's a good idea. — Antonin Scalia
Live your life. Take chances. Be crazy. Don't wait. Because right now is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be again.
Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. — Thomas Jefferson
It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes." — Hugo Black
The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period. — Donald Trump
Right To Freedom Quotes
We have no right to believe that freedom can be won without struggle. — Che Guevara
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. — Hermann Goring
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong. — Voltaire
If things go wrong, don’t go with them.
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. — Frederick Douglass
I love the freedoms we got in this country, I appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but I really appreciate my right to bear arms so I can shoot you if you try to burn mine. — Johnny Cash
I am determined to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt. — Nathanael Greene
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyways.
Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders. — Diane Nash
It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom. — Lucy Burns
A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.” Benjamin Franklin — Benjamin Franklin
Constitution Freedom Quotes
Whenever you can, act as a liberator. Freedom, dignity, wealth - these three together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity. If you bequeath all three to your people, their love for you will never die. — Cyrus the Great
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. — John Adams
We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments. — James Madison
Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.
To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. — Thurgood Marshall
Children do not constitute anyone's property:
they are neither the property of their parents nor even of society.
They belong only to their own future freedom. — Mikhail Bakunin
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right questions.
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
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. — Samuel Adams
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. — James Madison
[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government. — Patrick Henry
Martin Luther King Quotes
I met Rosa Parks when I was 17. I met Dr. [Martin Luther] King when I was 18. These two individuals inspired me to find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble. So I got in good trouble, necessary trouble. — John Lewis
What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism. — Rand Paul
Martin Luther King demeans his race and retards the advancement of his people. — Strom Thurmond
I'm taking one for the team,
Like Martin Luther King,
taking one for a dream — Method Man
Between what is going on in Iraq and Mumia being locked up unjustly, things going on in Israel, Palestine, we don't really have anyone right now like Gandhi. We don't have anyone like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X anymore. It's really a reference to a vision of hope, like someone like Gandhi. — Vinnie Paz
John Lennon imagined a world filled with peace and love. Martin Luther King dreamt of a world free from racial discrimination and oppression. The guy who invented the Frisbee, dreamt of a world where people would throw a fat, circular object at each other in order to pass the time. He succeeded. — Jon Lajoie
Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot. — John Lennon
If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it. — David Horowitz
A calling is you feel - you look out and see the need - maybe it's the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it's the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was - felt called. — Billy Graham
We need to get back to Martin Luther King’s dream, where people are treated on the content of their character, not their skin colour and not on their political viewpoints. — Konstantin Kisin
What Is Freedom Quotes
What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone. — St. Catherine of Siena
If yet your blood does not rage, then it is water that flows in your veins. For what is the flush of youth, if it is not of service to the motherland. — Chandra Shekhar Azad
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. — Jim Morrison
I don't mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom.
It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes,
deep inside yourself, you'll feel good no matter what. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
If it is right for men to fight for their freedom, and God knows what the human race would be like today if men had not, since time began, fought for their freedom, then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the children they bear. — Emmeline Pankhurst
Freedom is what we all seek, but it's what we do with that freedom that ultimately defines our character. In the end, a man's character cements his fate, good or bad. — Sonny Barger
Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought — Abraham Lincoln
Life is a sum of all your choices". So, what are you doing today? — Albert Camus
It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism. — Noam Chomsky
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat
Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. — Ayn Rand
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
The right to be able to speak openly and confidentially to another is, at times, codified legally if not ethically. — Gad Saad
There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law. — Edward Snowden
My feminism, as intended by me, extends to empowering women to make legal choices, not to judge the legal choices they make. My fight is for rights. — Maajid Nawaz
All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers. — Bobby Seale
Well, when I think of steroids I think of an image. You have the advantage over someone, which is a form of cheating. I guess it wouldn't be right unless it was legal for everybody. Reason it's not legal for everybody is because it can hurt people seriously. — Evander Holyfield
If it is right to be legally married, it is right to be legally divorced ... To be deprived of a Divorce is like being shut up in prison because someone attempted to kill you. It is just as honorable to get out of matrimonial trouble legally, as to be freed from any other wrong. — Mary Edwards Walker
Prior to Roe , ... whether one could obtain a legal abortion in the face of an unwanted pregnancy was a crap shoot. For 30 years now, it's been a constitutionally guaranteed right — David Garrow
Fundamental Rights Quotes
The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State. — Harry S. Truman
Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can't be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can't be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights. — Hugo Chavez
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life . . . — Nelson Mandela
To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching. — Warren E. Burger
The issue of human rights is one of the most fundamental human issues and also one of the most sensitive and controversial. — Ali Khamenei
Each state, so that it does not abridge the great fundamental rights belonging, under the Constitution, to all citizens, may grant or withhold such civil rights as it pleases; all that is required is that, in this respect, its laws shall be impartial. — Lyman Trumbull
What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights. — Tom G. Palmer
Scotland is not a region of the U.K.; Scotland is a nation, and if we cannot protect our interests within a U.K. that is going to be changing fundamentally, then that right of Scotland to consider the options of independence has to be there. — Nicola Sturgeon
Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe. — Dianne Feinstein
Political Rights Quotes
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. — Antonin Scalia
All talk on Islamic States is just an empty dream. No man in his right sense would accept a nation which bases its political administration on religion, and in a country like Malaysia with its multiracial and multireligious people, there is no room for an Islamic State. — Tunku Abdul Rahman
We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Republican is fine, if your a millionaire. Democrats is fair, if all you own is what you wear. Neither of them's really right, cause neither of them care. — Frank Zappa
I had a right to my own political opinions. I am a Southern woman, born with Revolutionary blood in my veins. Freedom of speech and of thought were my birthright, guaranteed, signed and sealed by the blood of our fathers. — Rose O'Neal Greenhow
The Church must take right ground in regard to politics... Politics are a part of a religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as part of their duty to God... God will bless or curse this nation, according to the course Christians take in politics. — Charles Grandison Finney
Of the people, by the people, for the people. — Sun Yat-sen
That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. — Richard Henry Lee
People often say, with pride, 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.' ... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics. — Martha Gellhorn
Rights And Freedoms Quotes
Revolution is an inalienable right of mankind. Freedom is an imperishable birth right of all. Labor is the real sustainer of society, the sovereignty of the ultimate destiny of the workers. — Bhagat Singh
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. — William S. Burroughs
Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. — Benjamin Franklin
The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute. — Julian Bond
Everything you do right now ripples outward and affects everyone. Your posture can shine your heart or transmit anxiety. Your breath can radiate love or muddy the room in depression. Your glance can awaken joy. Your words can inspire freedom. Your every act can open hearts and minds. — David Deida
Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth. — Liu Xiaobo
Freedom can never be taken for granted. Each generation must safeguard it and extend it. Your parents and elders sacrificed much so that you should have freedom without suffering what they did. Use this precious right to ensure that the darkness of the past never returns. — Nelson Mandela
I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind. — John Diefenbaker
I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation. — Coretta Scott King
The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country and live in our fashion. — Sitting Bull
Constitutional Law Quotes
As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically. — Antonin Scalia
Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government. — Alexander Hamilton
Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws. — Thurgood Marshall
The Constitution is the origin and measure of legislative authority. It says to legislators, thus far ye shall go and no farther. Not a particle of it should be shaken; not a pebble of it should be removed. — William Paterson
Hitler's dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. — Alan Bullock
From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law. — Leon Jaworski
From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law. — Leon Jaworski
In violation of the Habeas Corpus Act and the fundamental laws of our constitution these men have never been brought to trail or even allowed to see a lawyer. — John Amery
This shift from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty. — Francis Schaeffer
The greatest threat to the constitutional right to vote is voter fraud. — Lynn Westmoreland
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it. — Abraham Lincoln
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. — Noah Webster
Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury. — Alexander von Humboldt
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one. — James Madison
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. — James Madison
I didn't say 'former president,' I said 'president,' and I have the constitutional rights according to the constitution, including immunity from prosecution. — Saddam Hussein
I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm President of the United States of America. — Sayings
Its Constitution--the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence. — Rufus Choate
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. — James Madison
The pro-gun advocates point to the 2nd amendment of America's Constitution, citing Americans' right to bear arms as a protection against tyrants. Pro-Bitcoin advocates want protection against tyrants, too. The difference is how these two groups define tyranny. — Max Keiser
Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe until a trespass on the Constitution provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents and invasion of the dearest rights. — James Madison
We can't forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us. — Graham Nash
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
I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution. — L. Neil Smith
For thirty years, beginning with the invention of a privacy right in the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Left has been waging a systematic assault on the constitutional foundation of the nation. — David Horowitz
The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely, that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament. — A. V. Dicey
The notion of human right builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being. They differ, therefore, from constitutionally created rights guaranteed for specific people. — Amartya Sen
Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate. — John L. Lewis
The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision. — David Boies
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. — Benjamin Franklin
If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business. — David Prosser, Jr.
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