Famous Quotes & Sayings

Calvin Coolidge

One of the greatest perils to an extensive republic is the disregard of individual rights.

Busy Philipps

It's ludicrous that my friends in California aren't able to legally get married. It's a civil rights issue. In 20 years we're going to look back at tapes of these antigay people saying ridiculous things on the news and it's going to sound as antiquated as the newsreels of horrible racists from the '50s.

Alan Keyes

You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.

Alan Dershowitz

Individuals have the right to pick and choose which expressions to condemn, which to praise and which to say nothing about. Governments, however, must remain neutral as to the content of expression. And governments must protect the rights of all to express even the most despicable of views.

Alan Dershowitz

In today's distorted world of 'human rights,' truth takes a back seat to ideology, and false claims - especially those that 'support' radical ideologies - persist even after they have been exposed.

Al Franken

I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.

Jan Egeland

We receive reports now on a daily basis from our own people on the ground in Darfur on widespread atrocities and grave violations of human rights against the civilian population.

bell hooks

... the outcome of the Clarence Thomas hearings and his subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court shows how misguided, narrow notions of racial solidarity that suppress dissent and critique can lead black folks to support individuals who will not protect their rights.

Ban Ki-moon

I am willing to take any measures when it comes to the fundamental principle of human rights.

Ban Ki-moon

It is up to each and every one of us to raise our voice against crimes that deprive countless victims of their liberty, dignity and human rights. We have to work together to realize the equal rights promised to all by the United Nations Charter. And we must collectively give meaning to the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "no one shall be held in slavery or servitude"

Ban Ki-moon

From the Balkans to Africa, from Asia to the Middle East, we have witnessed the weakening or absence of effective governance leading to the ravaging of human rights and the abandonment of longstanding humanitarian principles. We need competent and responsible states to meet the needs of "we the peoples" for whom the UN was created. And the world's peoples will not be fully served unless peace, development and human rights, the three pillars of the UN, are advanced together with equal vigour.

Aung San Suu Kyi

I do protect human rights, and I hope I shall always be looked up as a champion of human rights.

Derrick Bell

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

Brendon Urie

You don't have to be the same as anybody else, but you can support - just concerning human rights in general.

Barry Goldwater

Trade unions infringe upon the property rights of company owners.

Eldridge Cleaver

I've gone beyond civil rights and human rights to creation rights.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread ...

encroaching on citizens' rights and worsening the situation.

Bernie Sanders

We are not going back. Not only are we not going to retreat on women's rights, we are going to expand them. We are going forward, not backward.

Bernie Sanders

I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund and Planned Parenthood. Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time. Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment.

Bernie Sanders

I'm very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we're seeing not only from the N.S.A. and the government but from corporate America, as well. We're losing our privacy rights. It's a huge issue.

Claire McCaskill

There are people who have legitimate concerns about false accusations and the impact that can have on a young person's life when they have been falsely accused. Kirsten [Gillibrand] and I are not unaware that that is an issue we need to be concerned about, and that's why we have made changes in the legislation to address not just the rights of the victim, the accuser, but also of the accused.

Daniel Pennac

Reader's Bill of Rights 1. The right to not read 2. The right to skip pages 3. The right to not finish 4. The right to reread 5. The right to read anything 6. The right to escapism 7. The right to read anywhere 8. The right to browse 9. The right to read out loud 10. The right to not defend your tastes

Cynthia McKinney

Eight generations of African-Americans are still waiting to achieve their rights - compensation and restitution for the hundreds of years during which they were bought and sold on the market.

Adolf Hitler

I wish and will continue to wish, that the German people should learn that by reason of practical examples afforded by their ability and work, they are not a second-rate or inferior people in comparison with others. On the contrary they are their equals according to all true standards of values and therefore entitled to equal rights in all respects.

Adolf Hitler

The purpose of social work should not be to distribute favours, but to restore rights.

Adolf Hitler

May the time not be far off when all other European nations will come to the realisation that the primary necessity is putting an end to the quarrels and strife of centuries and of building up of a finer community of all peoples is: The recognition of a higher common duty arising out of common rights?

Adolf Hitler

In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.

Abraham Lincoln

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them, when they are invaded.

Abraham Lincoln

Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other right.

Abraham Lincoln

I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.

Allen Weinstein

In the Federal Government, electronic records are as indispensable as their paper counterparts for documenting citizens' rights, the actions for which officials are accountable, and the nation's history.

Ann Douglas

The progress of women's rights in our culture, unlike other types of 'progress,' has always been strangely reversible.