Quotes on Rights

It is not possible that one man can convert another into a piece of property, thus at once annihilating all his personal rights, without the most flagrant injustice and usurpation.

I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.

I would say issues around human rights - either you're going to take a hard stance, or you're not. You can't borrow money from China the way the U.S. has done and then turn around and say, 'But you've got a human-rights problem.' You can't be half pregnant.

People have the right to protest - that's what democracy is all about. I have no problem with people exercising their democratic rights.

When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren't even considered human.

I think that the thing that we learned back in the day of the civil rights movement is that you do have to keep on keeping on.

If we are endowed by our Creator with rights, then why shouldn't those be attainable by gays and lesbians?

I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up or take a knee for your rights - anytime, anywhere, anyplace.

We can suspend disbelief about Harry Potter, and we do the same thing with God, and we do the same thing with human rights, and we do the same thing with money.

When a terrorist attack comes, you will not necessarily know who did it. What you can know is that certain kinds of leaders will use that to suspend your rights.

Black people have been fighting for basic citizenship rights since the inception of the country.

The goal of the revolution is to achieve the people's rights, but during the course of the revolution, we must stress military power - and the two are mutually contradictory.

The rights of homosexual people are human rights, and human rights are for everyone.

To fight for voting rights is to fight for human rights.

Respect for the rights of others means peace.

Human rights are being violated in so many places. But we don't give up because we know respect for human rights and human dignity is a basic condition for peace.

Wringing your hands about states' rights, forget it. They're gone. Basically, the federal government can do whatever it wants. Who's going to protect the states? My court? Ha - we're feds!

The world is littered with constitutions that have written guarantees of rights but that don't actually deliver rights. What differentiates the ones where rights are real from where rights are fake is that it's in the initial interests of the majority to actually deliver these rights.

Whether it is access to voting rights, representation in government, or the outsized influence of money in our political system, the opportunity to interact with and participate in democracy is available to some, but blocked for many.

Unity is power; without unity women cannot fight for their rights anywhere.

My father's approach to the most brutal and unambiguous social injustices during the civil rights struggle was rooted in nonviolence as a morally and tactically correct response.