Rights Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Margaret Thatcher

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.

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

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.

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

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

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

Niccolò Machiavelli

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

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.

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

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

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

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Albert Einstein

Where a trust becomes a monopoly the state has an immediate right to interfere.

Theodore Roosevelt

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

William Shakespeare

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Henry David Thoreau

It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it's all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right?

When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.