rights Quotes

“The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.”

“Your Majesty, please...I don’t like to complain. But down here below, we are feeling great pain. I know, up on top you are seeing great sights. But down at the bottom we, too, should have rights. We turtles can’t stand it. Our shells will all crack! Besides, we need food. We are starving!”

“There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

“It means the right to have our own opinions. Human problems aren’t like mathematics, Nat. Every problem doesn’t have just one answer; sometimes you get several answers—and you don’t know which is the right one.”

“He wanted to prove quickly what he felt in his bones: that no one owned the boat, that no one had the right to claim it from him.”

“People have a right to be the way they are.”

“...legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

“I agree with yours of the 22d that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. but we cannot always do what is absolutely best. those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. truth advances, & error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.