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b54f8b0
|
"Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.
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|
freespeech
offense
rights
free-speech
|
Salman Rushdie |
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b76b8c3
|
Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining.
|
|
freedom
rights
|
Alan Moore |
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14efd01
|
Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
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|
unalienable-rights
patriot
liberty
rights
patriotism
|
Robert A. Heinlein |
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3d88d9f
|
Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?
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|
unjust
humane
law
society
rights
government
|
Henry David Thoreau |
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b7d54f3
|
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
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|
war
yossarian
wwii
ironic
rights
|
Joseph Heller |
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29f733f
|
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
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|
humanity
science
education
skepticism
society
rights
|
Carl Sagan |
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8786bc0
|
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.
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|
slavery
freedom
rights
|
Ayn Rand |
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02ba675
|
Human kind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?
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|
women
inspirational
rights
|
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk |
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845e941
|
It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? -- ... There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and electricity; as exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and those of , so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains those despicable dreams of de Pauw -- neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [ ]
|
|
mankind
influence
discovery
politics
reason
science
happiness
philosophy
artifice
constitution
divine-right
expectation
holy-water
jefferson
paine
secular
secular-government
thomas-jefferson
thomas-paine
laws
invention
rights
government
divinity
superstition
|
John Adams |
|
c68bce6
|
But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution.' 'What sort of tools?' 'More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason--or are manipulated into reasoning--that the entire population must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can't be trusted.
|
|
freedom
george-dorn
hagbard-celine
rights
oppression
|
Robert Anton Wilson |
|
1dd1e98
|
For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his honor.
|
|
freedom
life
rights
honor
|
Ayn Rand |
|
6bfbaf1
|
This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.
|
|
nature
doctrine
hospitality
rights
|
Robert Green Ingersoll |
|
a8b28a1
|
violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.
|
|
violence
rights
|
Louis L'Amour |
|
bd70f20
|
Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-.
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|
rights
revolution
party
|
Anthony Burgess |
|
ad7788f
|
With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected and tortured after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves again. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me?
|
|
mind
equality
free
books
imagination
education
happiness
intelligence
conform
breach
burning
examiners
fliers
grabbers
imaginative-creators
jumpers
knowers
moutains
racers
runners
snatchers
swimmers
tinkerers
bright
intellectual
critics
target
image
dread
judgment
unfamiliar
judge
constitution
rights
cowardice
bullying
weapons
different
creativity
torture
school
|
Ray Bradbury |
|
b5ba18f
|
You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball--why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all had done was the sweating and the bleeding.
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|
corporate-greed
government-financing
grants
value-of-work
rights
finance
|
Clifford D. Simak |
|
a8e2138
|
A man's only got so many yeses inside him before he uses them all up.
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|
rights
surrender
|
Pat Conroy |
|
1f1cfaa
|
A right doesn't include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort.
|
|
rights
|
Ayn Rand |
|
961b4fa
|
You see, it is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one. When disparities become too great, a superior right, that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich.
|
|
poverty
wealth
politics
life
stealing
rights
crime
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
684609a
|
"There is no such thing as "the right to enslave".A nation can do it , just as a man can become a criminal - but neither can do it by right. It doesn't matter in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force (like soviet Russia), or by vote (like Nazi Germany)."
|
|
enslave
rights
|
Ayn Rand |
|
1b4e005
|
"I heard Mr. many years ago in Chicago. The hall seated 5,000 people; every inch of standing-room was also occupied; aisles and platform crowded to overflowing. He held that vast audience for three hours so completely entranced that when he left the platform no one moved, until suddenly, with loud cheers and applause, they recalled him. He returned smiling and said: 'I'm glad you called me back, as I have something more to say. Can you stand another half-hour?' 'Yes: an hour, two hours, all night,' was shouted from various parts of the house; and he talked on until midnight, with unabated vigor, to the delight of his audience. This was the greatest triumph of oratory I had ever witnessed. It was the first time he delivered his matchless speech, 'The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child'. I have heard the greatest orators of this century in England and America; O'Connell in his palmiest days, on the Home Rule question; Gladstone and John Bright in the House of Commons; Spurgeon, James and Stopford Brooke, in their respective pulpits; our own Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Webster and Clay, on great occasions; the stirring eloquence of our anti-slavery orators, both in Congress and on the platform, but none of them ever equalled in his highest flights.
|
|
equality
america
liberty-of-man-woman-and-child
matchless
oratory
triumph
ingersoll
robert-g-ingersoll
robert-green-ingersoll
robert-ingersoll
chicago
praise
england
rights
smile
respect
honor
speech
delight
|
Elizabeth Cady Stanton |
|
72c104d
|
By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making it more effective.
|
|
empowerment
law
rights
|
Karen Armstrong |
|
8bde9f7
|
No true love is possible, Lewis demonstrates, until we abandon our claims, our rights, our grievances. Until then we will be trapped in the obscurity of our heart's mixed motives, our will to possess, to control, to be our own gods.
|
|
cslewis
life
love
wisdom
control
rights
|
Michael D. O'Brien |
|
da75eb2
|
The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.
|
|
lying
love-for-country
nationalism
dignity
rights
patriotism
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
|
b45f70f
|
Humans have too many rights and not enough responsibilities. -Aras
|
|
wess-har
responsibilities
rights
|
Karen Traviss |
|
889d848
|
For the history of the American Negro is unique also in this: that the question of his humanity, and of his rights therefore as a human being, became a burning one for several generations of Americans, so burning a question that it ultimately became one of those used to divide the nation.
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|
racism
human-rights
history
blacks
whites
american-history
race-relations
race
rights
|
James Baldwin |
|
b882bee
|
The police can use violence to say, expel citizens from a public park because they are enforcing duly constituted laws. Laws gain their legitimacy from the Constitution. The Constitution gains its legitimacy from something called 'the people.' But how did 'the people' actually grant legitimacy to the Constitution? As the American and French revolutions make clear: basically, through acts of illegal violence. So what gives the police the right to use force to suppress the very thing-a popular uprising-that granted them their right to use force to begin with?
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|
violence
politics
society
rights
democracy
police
|
David Graeber |
|
91d2a88
|
There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.
|
|
political
patriotic
security
terrorism
privacy
rights
|
David K. Shipler |
|
6a34e92
|
"Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaration posits how, in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful"
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|
rights
|
David Mitchell |
|
3efb0aa
|
1776: A declaration of the Parlement of Paris: The first rule of justice is to conserve for each individual that which belongs to him. This is a fundamental rule of natural law, human rights and civil government; a rule which consists not only in maintaining the rights of property, but also those rights vested in the individual and derived from prerogatives of birth and social position.
|
|
politics
rights
|
Hilary Mantel |
|
d5edfc0
|
... just one more reminder that the rules are always different for girls, no matter who they are and no matter what they do.
|
|
women
girls
rights
rules
|
Roxane Gay |
|
9d48352
|
Women are human beings and have a right to control their own bodies. When that is denied, they are not free.
|
|
women
freedom
rights
human-beings
|
George Lakoff |
|
d420301
|
The heart of evil beats in Afghanistan. When men hold every advantage, neither wealth, nor beauty, nor intelligence, nor education, nor strength, nor family can compete with gender. Women have only prayer and hope as allies.
|
|
war
feminism
prayer
women
hope
rights
boys
evil
|
Jean Sasson |
|
d5e1bb0
|
Studies show that more than 90 percent of juveniles who are interrogated by police don't wait to talk to a lawyer and don't understand the rights the police have read them.
|
|
rights
|
Dashka Slater |