Under every government the [last] resort of the people, is an appeal to the sword; whether to defend themselves against the open attacks of a foreign enemy, or to check the insidious encroachments of domestic foes. Whenever a people ... entrust the defence of their country to a regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power of that country will remain under the direction of the most wealthy citizens.more A Framer quotes |
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.more Lord Acton quotes |
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The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.more John Adams quotes |
Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.more John Adams quotes |
If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations... And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of history... To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to excercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen... In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies...more John Adams quotes |
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have... a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers.more John Adams quotes |
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.more John Adams quotes |
You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments: rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.more John Adams quotes |
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking, or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.more John Adams quotes |
But the indissoluble link of union
between the people of the several States of this confederated nation
is, after all, not in the RIGHT, but in the HEART. If the day
should ever come (may Heaven avert it !) when the affections of
the people of these States shall be alienated from each other, when
the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision
of interests shall fester into hatred, the bonds of political association -
will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the
magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies ; and
far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part
in friendship with each other than to be held together by constraint.
Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents
which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution,
to form again a more perfect Union, by dissolving that which
could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited
by the law of political gravitation to the center.more John Quincy Adams quotes |
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution,
are worth defending at all hazards;
and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.
We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors:
they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure
and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.
It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation,
enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us
by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them
by the artifices of false and designing men.more Samuel Adams quotes |
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.more Samuel Adams quotes |
The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.more Samuel Adams quotes |
Do you think someone who is about to rape you is going to stop and think about a condom?more Eli Adorno quotes |
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I call the mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master [and] receives new truth as an angel from Heaven.more Woody Allen quotes |
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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.more Amnesty International quotes |
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.more Susan B. Anthony quotes |
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Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.more Saint Thomas Aquinas quotes |
To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these
retain their facility when they are too large.more Aristotle quotes |
Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.more Nancy Astor quotes |
The use of “religion” as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.more Margaret Atwood quotes |
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The freedom to share one’s insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.more Carl Friedrich Bahrdt quotes |
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What I'd like to see police do is deal with important issues and not these sorts of victimless crimes when society is riddled with problems.more Alderman Rodney Barket quotes |
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.more Alan Barth quotes |
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.more Frederic Bastiat quotes |
There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because the law makes them so.more Frederic Bastiat quotes |
[Natural rights are] moral claims to those spheres of action which are necessary for the welfare of the individual and the development of his personality.more M. Searle Bates quotes |
The Supreme Court is steadily eroding the protections against police excess promised by the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.more Dan Baum quotes |
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.more Dan Baum quotes |
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Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, and (c) no one -- at least no one other than the participants -- is harmed by it.more Hugo Adam Bedau quotes |
But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you – the social reformers – see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.more Isaiah Berlin quotes |
Liberty, whether natural, civil, or political, is the lawful power in the individual to exercise his corresponding rights. It is greatly favored in law.more Henry Campbell Black quotes |
An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.more Justice Hugo L. Black quotes |
The interest of the people lies in being able to join organizations, advocate causes, and make political “mistakes” without being subjected to governmental penalties.more Justice Hugo L. Black quotes |
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Without deviation, without exception, without any ifs, buts, or whereases, freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they express, or the words they speak or write.more Justice Hugo L. Black quotes |
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And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self preservation and defense.more Sir William Blackstone quotes |
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Freedom of religion means the right of the individual to choose and to adhere to whichever religious beliefs he may prefer, to join with others in religious associations to express these beliefs, and to incur no civil disabilities because of his choice…more Joseph L. Blau quotes |
In the whole history of law and order, the biggest step was taken by primitive man when...the tribe sat in a circle and allowed only one man to speak at a time. An accused who is shouted down has no rights whatever.more Curtis Bok quotes |
