Rights Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Henry David Thoreau

What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them.

Henry David Thoreau

No ability, no strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us.

Theodore Roosevelt

I manage to blast through the ridiculous liberal bias of the media and speak right to the hearts of the people - or at least I try.

Though he made a joke when asked to do the right thing, he always did it. He was so much more in earnest than he appeared. He did not do himself justice.

Florence Nightingale

He [the prince] holds to what is right when he can but knows how to do wrong when he must.

Niccolò Machiavelli

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!

Vincent van Gogh

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Chairman Mao once said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was only partly right: power that comes from the barrel of a gun can be effective only for a short time. In the end, peoples love for truth, justice, freedom, and democracy will triumph. No matter what governments do, the human spirit will always prevail.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.

Thomas Jefferson

You are right in demanding that an artist approach his work consciously, but you are confusing two concepts: the solution of a problem and the correct formulation of a problem. Only the second is required of the artist.

We need to create a mood where it is everywhere thought morally right for as many people as possible to acquire capital.

Margaret Thatcher

God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one - fifth of our vast population as untouchables.

As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himself.

For these reasons we are natural allies of those who seek to inject any form of planning in our society that enriches life and guarantees the right to exist in freedom and dignity. For these constructive movements we are prepared to give our energies and consistent support; because in the need for family planning, Negro and white have a common bond; and together we can and should unite our strength for the wise preservation, not of races in general, but of the one race we all constitute - the human race.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The lame in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it, and it is clear that the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not in the right direction must increase his aberration.

Some people throw a bit of their personality after their bad arguments, as if that might straighten their paths and turn them into right and good arguments-just as a man in a bowling alley, after he has let go of the ball, still tries to direct it with gestures.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

Jean-Paul Sartre

It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws.

Winston Churchill

We don't need more money, we don't need greater success or fame, we don't need the perfect body or even the perfect mate-right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Scouting is not an abstruse or difficult science: rather it is a jolly game if you take it in the right light. In the same time it is educative, and (like Mercy) it is apt to benefit him that giveth as well as him that receives.

Robert Baden-Powell

I believe that God is like a powerhouse, like where you keep electricity, like a power station. And that he's a supreme power, and that he's neither good not bad, left, right, black or white. He just is. And we tap that source of power and make of it what we will. Just as electricity can kill people in a chair, or you can light a room with it. I think God is.

Many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and... God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again

I have not spoken to him directly. Here's the reason. Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's gonna say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions.