A Quote by Alexander Hamilton
Effective resistance to usurpers is possible only provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them.
Related Quotes
An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens.
The pacifist thinks that the alternative to war is peace; it is not. Sometimes the alternative is oppression. Sometimes certain God-given rights and liberties can be preserved only by resistance to that which would destroy them. And to defend certain basic God-given rights and liberties is not immoral but righteous.
As the interned American citizens of Japanese descent learned, the Bill of Rights provided them with little protection when it was needed.
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the first place. Now, I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights.
Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace... One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being... The people owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.
I believe that the Government's first duty is to defend its citizens, to defend them against the harms that come out of hate.
Defend yourselves! If people don't defend their rights, they lose them.
New possibilities for a more active democracy are beginning to emerge in the information age. Effective citizen action is possible if citizens develop the abilities to gain access to information of all kinds and the skills to put such information to effective use.
Rights compliance helps effective outcomes, it does not hinder them. That should come as no surprise because the 'human rights' in the Human Rights Act are the rights adopted in the aftermath of the horrors of the second world war, and are designed to protect all of us from oppression.
The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.
The FBI was creating a world where citizens rely on Apple to defend their rights, rather than the other way around.
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.
My main quarrel with liberalism is not that liberalism places great emphasis on individual rights - I believe rights are very important and need to be respected. The issue is whether it is possible to define and justify our rights without taking a stand on the moral and even sometimes religious convictions that citizens bring to public life.
We must learn, and especially we Germans, that resistance is not only possible and allowed in dictatorships. There is resistance that man must perform every day.
I consider Ronald Reagan one of the greatest U.S. presidents since the World War II because of his staunch resistance to Communism and his efforts to defend human rights.
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