A Quote by Lysander Spooner

Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'

Lysander Spooner

Quote Topics

Creature Distinguished Individual Individual Rights Legally Public Rights Speaking Thing Things

Quote Author

Lysander Spooner
American - Philosopher
January 19, 1808 - May 14, 1887

Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public health,' 'public good,' 'public welfare,' and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.

Lysander Spooner

I am disgusted at the way May has been speaking. The EU nationals living in the UK came here legally and they have protected rights.

Nigel Farage

It's a sick thing, right: people are afraid of public speaking. I do public speaking, except my public speaking involves the audience only having one type of emotion and one type of reaction. If they have anything other than laughter, it's a failure. That's an absurd thing for a human to try to seek. The main thing to realize is that whatever I say, it's my truth and I believe in it, and if I don't get a laugh off that, then it's not working.

Hari Kondabolu

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

Thomas Sowell

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights; it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man's deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against governmental actions that the Bill of Rights was written.

Ayn Rand

If you're CEO of a company, you have to be a public person. You're speaking to the press, you're speaking to investors, you're speaking to employees, you're the public face of the company and so kind of naturally you become more extroverted, more outwards facing.

Fabrice Grinda

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Ayn Rand

The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent and sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious origin.

George Jellinek

A lot of people think that public speaking means that you are standing at a podium giving a speech, but public speaking comes in lots of different formats.

Dana Perino

Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

Ayn Rand

Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.

John Ralston Saul

For many years, I didn't even like the idea of doing a one-person play. Public speaking got me past that. I've always been good at public speaking, but I never really enjoyed it. Then I started to really enjoy it, and that's made all the difference.

Mimi Kennedy

Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.

Ayn Rand

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.

Michael Sandel

The apology, that is constantly put forth for the injustice of government, viz., that a man must consent to give up some of his rights, in order to have his other rights protected - involves a palpable absurdity, both legally and politically.

Lysander Spooner

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

Ayn Rand