Quotes about Rights

Economic equality is the master-key to nonviolent independence.

Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom.

We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

It seemed to me that constant stressing of the individual rights and privileges of American citizenship had overshadowed the equally important truth that such individualism can be sustained only so long as the citizen accepts his full responsibility for the welfare of the nation that protects him in the exercise of these rights.

Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are both to be reckoned among their rights.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased.