Among
the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly,
to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend
them in the best manner they can.
-- Samuel Adams
| As
global citizens, it is our responsibility to become active participants in our
democracy, and to make sure that everyone's civil rights are protected.
--
Robert Alan |  |
The USA was
founded in the name of democracy, equality and individual freedom, but is failing
to deliver the fundamental promise of protecting rights for all.
-- Amnesty
International
*
"It
was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens;
but we, the whole people, who formed the Union... Men, their rights and nothing
more; women, their rights and nothing less."
-- Susan
B. Anthony | 
|
 |
*
So
long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights,
we'll be called a democracy.
-- Roger Nash Baldwin
|
Thought
that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken.
This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and
dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
-- Alan Barth
Sometimes
the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared
the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve... But how is this
legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons
what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong.
See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the
citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without
delay ... No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability,
harmony and logic.
-- Frederic Bastiat
The
[Supreme] Court during the past decade let police obtain search warrants on the
strength of anonymous tips. It did away with the need for warrants when police
want to search luggage, trash cans, car interiors, bus passengers, fenced private
property and barns.
-- Dan Baum
| |
*
"Through
electing officials that will protect the Constitution and commit themselves to
the rights of the people and the health of the nation, we will be able to ensure
that no group of ideologues and no private sector institution can coopt our rights,
take us into senseless wars and steal the nation from its people."
-- Harry
Belafonte |
"Civil
Rights opened the windows. When you open the windows, it does not mean that everybody
will get through. We must create our own opportunities."
-- Mary Frances
Berry (American Writer, b.1938)
An
unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider
to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.
-- Justice Hugo L. Black
"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 |
|
At the foundation
of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials
an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules
of conduct that are commands to the citizen.
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
The
Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights.
Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing
rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
-- Justice William
J. Brennan
The
people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
-- Edmund Burke
Democracy
is not the law of the
majority but the protection of the minority.
-- Albert Camus
 | Every
advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education,
one after another-came with the support and leadership of American Labor.
~ Jimmy
Carter |
*
If
we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe
in it at all.
-- Noam
Chomsky | 
|
| “Old
or young, healthy as a horse or a person with a disability that hasn't kept you
down, man or woman, Native American, native born, immigrant, straight or gay --
whatever; the test ought to be I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights
and the Declaration of Independence. I believe in religious liberty. I believe
in freedom of speech. I believe in working hard and playing by the rules. I'm
showing up for work tomorrow. I'm building that bridge to the 21st century. That
ought to be the test.”
~ Bill
Clinton |  |
| |
*
"I thought it was a good time to have those debates again about government using
fear to erode away civil liberties, which happens every 30 to 40 years"
--
George Clooney The
Patriot Act is certainly a concern; all of those things are dangerous. I think
more important than me preaching is that we as a nation have to have the debate.
I don't know what the answers are. I just know that if the idea is to say talking
about it makes you unpatriotic, I've got to call your bluff on that.
-- George
Clooney |
| |
*
A
people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path
either to dictatorship of the right or the left.
-- Justice
William O. Douglas Restriction
of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is
the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
-- Justice
William O. Douglas |
The
privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible
steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed
as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen --
a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s]
life.
-- Justice
William O. Douglas
The
Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs
of people.
-- Justice
William O. Douglas
*
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 | 
|
See
also HUMAN RIGHTS Quotes
