Quotes on Rights

America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.

Denying the rights of women and girls is not only wrong in itself; it has a serious social and economic impact that holds us all back.

True religion, like our founding principles, requires that the rights of the disbeliever be equally acknowledged with those of the believer.

I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.

What does the Negro want? His answer is very simple. He wants only what all other Americans want. He wants opportunity to make real what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, what the Four Freedoms establish. While he knows these ideals are open to no man completely, he wants only his equal chance to obtain them.

It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

Nothing has been more detrimental to me than to be considered a symbol, because I never stood for any of that... The civil rights movement thought they would do me harm over the years by disassociating themselves from me. Well, nothing in the world was more to my advantage. I was never one of them... I had my own divine mission.

Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.

Just because a child's parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.

A state of war is not a blank check... when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.

The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.

As I got to know the people of the Civil Rights Movement, I realized... _x000D_ I am the hopeful black woman who was denied her right to vote. _x000D_ I am the caring white supporter killed on the front lines of freedom. _x000D_ I am the unarmed black kid who maybe needed a hand, but instead was given a bullet. I am the two fallen police officers murdered in the line of duty. 'Selma' has awakened my humanity.

Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support. The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy.

Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.

My aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam.

The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens.