Top 500 Rights Quotes

I believe that reproductive rights are human rights, and they are nonnegotiable.

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

If someone tried to deprive you of your rights, you’ve got to resist it. You’ve got to resent it. You’ve got to fight against it.

I’m an American citizen. I pay my taxes. I want my equal rights. But this is my country, and consequently, I don’t want to open up for ISIS or for anybody that will take away what we’ve already gained.

I thought I might find the real me in Oxford. Civil rights made me accept being a black intellectual. There was no such thing before, but then it was something. So I became one.

I’m very passionate about equal rights.

For some of Britain’s most powerful people, hunting and shooting are primordial rights, and any challenge to them is treated as illegitimate. They assert ownership not only of the land but also of the social relationships surrounding it.

It was not until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s that Congress got serious about the assignment laid out in the post-Civil War amendments.

Some values must be universal, like human rights and the equal worth of every human being.

There can be no assumption that today’s majority is ‘right’ and the Amish and others like them are ‘wrong.’ A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.

I think everyone must settle for what is in the parameter of their own rights. No one must have an evil intention toward the territorial benefit or integrity of other nations.

Voting rights matter. They are a major part of who we are as Americans.

The history of black America was from slavery, oppression, civil rights, and you felt kind of isolated as an entity in our country.

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

I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.

I demanded more rights for women because I know what women had to put up with.

In 1995, I sold the rights to Harry Bosch to Paramount. They had several screenplays written, but a movie never happened. Harry Bosch went on the shelf, and I had to wait 15 years to get him back.

At the end of the day, the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott had to be converted into the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We don’t want politicians who’ve gotta be coaxed, cajoled and protested. We want them on our side from the beginning.

Planned Parenthood’s mission, on paper, is to give women quality and affordable health care and to protect women’s rights. In reality, their mission is to increase their abortion numbers and, in turn, increase their revenue.

The media could do a much better job, that’s for sure, especially the media that targets women… Human rights? They couldn’t care less!

My earliest memories are of the civil rights era. My earliest experiences were rage.

In the 1950s, the black men and women and their white allies who fought for civil rights and basic human dignity could look to the federal government. If the racist sheriff and his troops beat them with batons or sprayed them and their children with water cannons, the attorney general would act.

I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men’s rights are nothing more. Women’s rights are nothing less.

We think of our prison inmates as the dregs of society, and we scorn them and push them off to the side and forget about them. We have to remember that they are humans, and they have rights, and yes, they did wrong, but we all have one shot at doing wrong, you know?

I have a prominent platform and I want to use it to promote respect for human rights, democracy, and personal freedom. For me, this is bigger than basketball.

There might be a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats on key social issues like women’s rights and health care. But when it comes to taking corporate cash, they’re pretty much the same beast.

When you feel powerful, you are willing to stand up for your rights, you are willing to stand up for what you believe in, you’re more willing to stand up and be counted.

The president of the United States, his role is to uphold and to fight for the rights of every person, every American.

I think the government has a role in protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens.

Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population.

We all need to work together, because there are no jobs on a dead planet; there is no equity without rights to decent work and social protection, no social justice without a shift in governance and ambition, and, ultimately, no peace for the peoples of the world without the guarantees of sustainability.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers – one that would protect Americans’ liberty at all times – both in war, and in peace.

Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.

Despite egregious human rights abuses, military dictatorship in Greece, and Russian atrocities in Chechnya, no state has ever been voted out of the Council of Europe.

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.

‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

The American people must be assured that no federal agency can trample their First Amendment rights.

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

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

I said that there is considerable alienation among the people of Kashmir which is primarily because of the human rights excesses by the security forces in Kashmir and the impunity from prosecution given to them by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Fanatics end by subverting their own argument. For instance, animal rights activists have some point, and many people feel sympathy with them. But animal rights fanatics do not have a point. They are the sort of people who threaten human beings in their effort to ‘defend’ animals.

Historically, the judicial branch has often been the sole protector of the rights of minority groups against the will of the popular majority.

The only way to do the human rights thing is to do the right thing medically.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

If any man’s money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

It’s the most ludicrous thing when people protest equal rights of other human beings.

There have always been difficult situations for activists in Pakistan. In the 1960s, people fought for linguistic and ethnic rights in relation to the Bangladesh movement and the struggle of the people in the western Balochistan province.

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

I have always had a great deal of respect and admiration for Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a true humanitarian and champion of Women’s Rights and Civil Rights.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope – that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow.

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.

Americans don’t know the Constitution. More than half of those surveyed can’t name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment. Only a quarter can name all three branches of government.

We are affirming human rights for all women and girls, acknowledging the full range of diversity that exists, and detailing actions to prevent violence.