We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.
It may be an extreme example brought about by abnormal circumstances – but the criteria of human rights kick in, surely, precisely when the conditions are extreme and the situation is abnormal.
The civil rights movement was about access to public space. We had to fight for public space.
Our challenge is to mobilize a new coalition of conscience to restore the Voting Rights Act, strengthen voting rights and broaden voter access in the legislatures of the 50 states.
Since achieving their independence in 1992, the people of Croatia have built a democratic society based on the rule of law, respect for human rights, and a free market economy.
I am waiting for the day when the German Bundestag debates the violation of human rights in Saudi Arabia.
Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.
Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.
I’m always going to support the LGBT community and equal rights for the LGBT community. That’s going to be with me ’till the day I die and beyond. I mean, that’s just what it is!
Obama’s not down for the civil rights struggle, and he certainly wasn’t down for the apartheid struggle, but he’s clearly gonna take advantage of it and insert himself in such a way as to make it look like he is single-handedly responsible for apartheid going by the wayside.
When I lived in London, I worked at the U.N. for a while as its human rights and refugees officer. I have two degrees, and my second was in radio. I was a programmer and news reporter in Canada. My CV looks bananas.
Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are – these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.
From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.
Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice – those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have more than you need, then you share it with people who don’t.
The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important ’cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.
Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?
America’s support for human rights and democracy is our noblest export to the world.
I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, ‘Hey man, we don’t go for that anymore.’
Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.
In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign.
These are all voluntary resources which help parents sort out the choices without infringing on the artists’ rights to free speech, which is something that we respect.
I believe in my race, colour. I never felt inferior to anyone. Maybe that’s why the folks who made me feel that way, may think Vivian Richards is the most arrogant guy on earth, but no. I bat for human beings, equal rights.
Press freedom is the foundation of the rights of all Filipinos to the truth.
The Republicans want an autocracy where the rights of minorities and others are not protected.
The freedoms of religion, thought and speech are all fundamental rights Canadians not only enjoy, we have fought for them at home and abroad. We know that a vibrant democracy means that on some issues, Canadians will understandably have different views.
As president, I will only nominate judges – including Supreme Court justices – who will commit to upholding Roe v. Wade as settled law and protect women’s reproductive rights.
The whole gun debate needs to be infused with a discussion about manhood. It’s frustrating to hear debates about gun rights vs. gun control, and yet very few people say what’s hidden in plain sight: It’s really a contest of meanings about manhood.
Our nation’s founding fathers carefully crafted a Bill of Rights – an articulation of personal liberties woven into the entire fabric of our free society. When any of those freedoms are threatened anywhere, they must be defended and protected everywhere.
The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his ‘basic rights.’
The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.
One of the eternal truths is that happiness is created and developed in peace, and one of the eternal rights is the individual’s right to live.
Border strengthening is effective, but not if done in isolation. We also need to give priority to establishing public institutions that deliver a sustained level of security and justice for citizens. Border security can never come at the expense of migrants’ rights. Nor can it be used to legitimize inhumane treatment.
It is absolutely right for the state to define the rights and status of people cohabiting in different forms of relationships, including civil partnerships.
I don’t believe gun owners have rights.
I believe that the real expression of your religious beliefs is shown in the daily pattern of your life, in what you contribute to your surroundings and what you take away without infringing on the rights of other people.
We believe women have rights in Islam that they’ve yet to obtain.
My hope is that the 21st century will be the first century where there will be no violation of human rights, and to that end, Japan would like to do our outmost.
Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government – the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more.
If children do not understand the Constitution, they cannot understand how our government functions, or what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the United States.
The beauty of our country is that when it was founded that they took some time to lay out civil liberties in the first 10 Amendments – the Bill of Rights. I’m a firm believer in those civil liberties and the ability to have your own opinion.
Iranian parents can’t stop their children. They’re just wild – they want to party, they want their rights, they want to paint, they want to dance. No one can stop these new generations coming. That’s why Iran has to open up: it’s like a pot full of hot water, vapour and steam.
Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I’ve sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That’s the saddest thing of all, because they’re locked up and no one else can make them.
It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men’s property, which they had not before, as individuals.
The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.
The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.
In the US, you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company’s machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company’s server, the police can get it without showing you anything.
My father wanted me to be a dentist like him, or any doctor, really. There was this attitude of, ‘The civil rights movement was not about you being an artist.’
While supporting human rights in another country is important, fighting for our own safety is crucial.
Homelessness has become a human rights crisis.
You can’t fight for your rights if you don’t know what they are.
