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The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.
-Georges Bernanos
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The public good is in nothing more essentially interested than in the protection of every individual's private rights.
-William Blackstone
Commentaries on the Laws of England
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Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.
-William Blackstone
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The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to create rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
-Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.
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Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.
-William Jennings Bryan
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The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.
-Calvin Coolidge
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Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.
-Dick Gregory
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A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.
-Vaclav Havel
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There are those who say to you -- we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.
-Hubert Humphrey
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The theory of rights enables us to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong and lasting accord between all the elements which compose the nation.
-Giuseppe Mazzini
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Books about Rights
