Top 1200 Constitutional Rights Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I know that we will be judged in history by not only how we disrupt terrorism but how we protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, even Americans who don't wish us well. We must do all these things exceptionally well.

I guess patriarchal stereotypes have, as is true for most people, created painful moments in my life. As a result, I'm an activist. I'm for women's rights, children's rights, human rights, animal rights. I want to be part of the solutions to try to correct imbalance. And 'Westworld,' for me, is that.

We are so considerate of the minute constitutional rights and even of the political feelings and influence of people whom we have every reason to anticipate with preventive action!... The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.

Although Britain has, since 1653, had nothing approaching a single, codified constitution, it did for a very long time possess a broad cult of constitutional writing. The Petition of Right of 1628, like the Bill of Rights of 1689, was a cherished text. So, most of all, was Magna Carta.

I simply didn't believe we needed a constitutional amendment to protect women's rights. I knew of only one law that was discriminatory toward women, a law in North Dakota stipulating that a wife had to have her husband's permission to make wine.

Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.

The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion.

The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.

If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law.

Americans think their danger is terrorists. They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution.... The terrorists are not anything like the threat we face from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism.... The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown

Everybody’s got rights. A man tied to a bed got rights. A man down in a dungeon got rights. A little screaming baby got rights. Yeah, you got rights. What you don’t got is power.

I don't think it's a lack of will. I think it's an issue of what people view as constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment, number one, and what customers and business partners expect around the world from secure computing systems. And it's a difference of view.

A constitutional state is like daily bread, like water to drink and air to breath, and the best thing about democracy is that it is the only system capable of securing the constitutional state.

But look what happens when the government gives you rights. When the government gives you rights, unlike when God gives you rights, the government can take them away. When government gives you rights, the government can tell you how to exercise those rights.

Proper training and federal supervision in state-federal partnerships are essential to both assuring constitutional rights and enforcing our immigration laws. Our Founding Fathers' concept of federalism does not prohibit such cooperation, and we have learned from experience that joint efforts work best.

We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights--the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound these rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.

It's long been common practice among many to draw a distinction between "human rights" and "property rights," suggesting that the two are separate and unequal - with "property rights" second to "human rights."

You hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!' You never hear a real American talk like that.

I wore a uniform to stand up for all rights and that means I don't pick or choose which I defend, whether it's for equality rights or women's rights. I've been consistent on that in my public life. I've also stood up for religious freedom, conscience rights of freedom of speech.

I'd love to thwart the Census form, but I want a constitutional basis for doing it - and here's the tricky thing. I think even constitutional purists would tell you that just because something isn't in the Constitution does not mean the government cannot do it.

Human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard.

It didn't really change my opinion about [Edward] Snowden all that much, but I definitely feel like as a culture, it gave us information that generated a responsibility to protect ourselves as much as we can and also a responsibility to hold our government accountable to honoring our constitutional rights.

President Bush has asserted the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on any American without a warrant in the name of fighting terrorism. He has asserted presidential power beyond stated constitutional rights, and there is no Republican gutsy enough to call his hand.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights — and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard.

There is no coloration to rights. Everybody has rights. I don't care who you are, where you come from. You got rights. I got rights. All God's children got rights.

I published a thesis about animal rights when I was studying in England in 1991. Back then, I was a human rights lawyer and people condemned me for talking about animal rights when human rights are still not guaranteed. However, human rights are guaranteed in a society where animal rights are secured.

So what's the difference between republican and democratic forms of government? John Adams captured the essence of the difference when he said, 'You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.' Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.

The Second Amendment is a constitutional right. I didn't make it up, the Republican Party didn't make it up. It's in the Constitution. I think it's just as important as any of the other rights in our constitution.

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.

Protests, such as those in favor of labor rights, women's suffrage, civil rights and gay rights, helped to make America as great as it is.

Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.

I guess the language that Justice Ginsburg used at the closing of the VMI (United States v. Virginia Military Institute) case is an important thing; it resonates with me: 'A prime part of the history of our Constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded.'

For liberalism is a delicate thing. It encompasses so much -- constitutional government, democratic elections, freedom of worship, civil rights, free trade -- that we think of it as timeless and universal. But liberalism came into being in a real place and time, like a flame it has wavered in various eras, and it can be snuffed out.

Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights.

The Constitution of the United States has absolutely nothing to say about a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Were the federal courts to recognize such a right, it would be completely without constitutional basis.

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.

I expect to see the day when the Elders of Israel will protect and sustain civil and religious liberty and every Constitutional right bequeathed to us by our fathers, and spread these rights abroad in connection with the Gospel for the salvation of all nations. I shall see this whether I live or die.

It is a president's constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate's constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent.

My first and foremost consideration is the safety of the people of the city of Minneapolis. And my first and foremost consideration is making sure that people can also express their constitutional rights peaceably.

I don't support gay marriage, but I also don't support a constitutional amendment banning it. However, I do support same sex unions that would give gay couples all the rights, privileges and protections of marriage.

You could not be in the civil rights movement without having an appreciation for everybody's rights. That these rights are not divisible - not something men have and women don't and so on.

[You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments: Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights, derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.

If a country doesn't recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.

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.

If you believe in equal rights, then what do “women’s rights,” “gay rights,” etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.

The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question, with the actual and threatened aggressions of the Northern States and a portion of their people, upon the well-defined constitutional rights of the Southern citizens; the rapid growth and increase, in all the elements of power, of a purely sectional party.

I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity.

We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist." You never hear a real American talk like that.

[I]n constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach 'the verge,' have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a 'downhill thrust' easily set in motion but difficult to retard or stop.

Just as the white man and every other person on this earth has God-given rights, natural rights, civil rights, any kind of rights that you can think of, when it comes to defending himself, black people - we should have the right to defend ourselves also.

People have opinions about everything and especially when you get into that world of animal rights or tree rights or whatever rights, they all have an opinion.

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 interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of Government. But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

No one is arguing that the entire Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Section 2 is the most important part of the act. It gives people the right to challenge discriminatory laws in court. It applies to the entire nation. It is constitutional, and it will continue to protect all Americans.

I think what Republicans want is someone who will stand up and lead, who will take on the great challenges of the day, who will make the case that the path we're on isn't working; that the Obama-economy is a disaster, that Obamacare is a trainwreck, that our constitutional rights are under assault and that we need to restore America's leadership in the world.

We must secure our borders and restore the rule of law, and more than anyone running, Ted Cruz has fought to make this nation secure while protecting our constitutional rights.

England shouldn't have the real freedom of vote and we shouldn't either. Because as [James Madison] put it, one of the primary goals of government was to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, to make sure the opulent maintain their rights. The constitutional system was structured to ensure that outcome.

Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.

The American founding is not just about a group of people, a group of men. It is about an ideal: Both a vision and understanding of the very essence of democracy, constitutional government, a representative republic, and the remarkably powerful concept of being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.