Quotes on Individual Rights

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.

Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.