A DI reader named Mike Baker offered me his large collection of quotes for reprinting here. Today’s installment of quotes are on the topic of Liberty and Human Rights.
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
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. ~ Albert Camus
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” –Frederick Douglass
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809)
Tolerance is ennobling, which is why we should teach it to our children. Pluralism is insurance against tyranny, which is why we should demand it of our government. To speak up for even the most despised minorities is both morally right and politically prudent.” ~ Steven Landsburg
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. –Albert Einstein
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
-Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776
Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again. -Ronald Reagan
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. -W. Somerset Maugham
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” -Patrick Henry
Fear is not the natural state of civilized people. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi
Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ”Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death. ~ Eugene V. Debs
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions. ~ Noam Chomsky
The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with. ~Eleanor Holmes Norton
Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. ~ Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty.
It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression;
for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
~ Thomas Paine, “Dissertations on First Principles of Government”, 1795
