Fundamental Rights Quotes

Short of preventing harm to the child, the standard of 'best interest of the child' is insufficient to serve as a compelling state interest overruling a parent's fundamental rights ... To suggest otherwise would be the logical equivalent to asserting that the state has the authority to break up stable families and redistribute its infant population to provide each child with the 'best family.' It is not within the province of the state to make significant decisions concerning the custody of children merely because it could make a 'better' decision. ~ Barbara Madsen

The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision. ~ David Boies

My hope is that the Pope Francis visit to Cuba will remind all the Cuban citizens that they possess dignity and fundamental rights that come from God and that the Castro regime has no claim on changing what is 100% God-given. ~ Marco Rubio

Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights. ~ Garry Kasparov

The liberal ideals of the Enlightenment could be realized only in very partial and limited ways in the emerging capitalist order: "Democracy with its mono of equality of all citizens before the law and Liberalism with its right of man over his own person both were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy," Rocker correctly observed. Those who are compelled to rent themselves to owners of capital in order to survive are deprived of one of the most fundamental rights: the right to productive, creative and fulfilling work under one's own control, in solidarity with others. And under the ideological constraints of capitalist democracy, the prime necessity is to satisfy the needs of those in a position to make investment decisions; if their demands are not satisfied, there will be no production, no work, no social services, no means for survival. All necessarily subordinate themselves and their interests to the overriding need to serve the interests of the owners and managers of the society, who, furthermore, with their control over resources, are easily able to shape the ideological system (the media, schools, universities and so on) in their interests, to determine the basic conditions within which the political process will function, its parameters and basic agenda, and to call upon the resources of state violence, when need be, to suppress any challenge to entrenched power. The point was formulated succinctly in the early days of the liberal democratic revolutions by Joh ~ Noam Chomsky

I think the government has a role in protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens. ~ Al Franken

Of course we desire education and we think it is a good thing, but you don't have to have education in order to know that you want certain fundamental rights, you have got aspirations, you have got acclaims. It has nothing to do with education whatsoever. ~ Nelson Mandela

The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Race is one millimeter deep. Intrepidly attending the dissection of a corpse", Bryson quotes the surgeon who pulled back a minute layer of skin and said: "That's all that race is – a sliver of epidermis." As we spread across the world, some people are thought to have evolved lighter skin in order to glean vitamin D from weaker sunlight. Throughout human history, people have "de-pigmented" and "re-pigmented" to suit their environment.

Biologically, skin colour is just "a reaction to sunlight", Bryson quotes the anthropologist Nina Jablonski as saying. She adds: "And yet look how many people have been enslaved or hated or lynched or deprived of fundamental rights through history because of the colour of their skin. ~ Bill Bryson

India's democracy where over 1 billion people have a voice in deciding their future is a world example of how governance can incorporate diversity into a movement for inclusive growth. New modes of democratic engagement, especially through using e-governance are allowing greater access to fundamental rights for all our people. ~ Narendra Modi

The United States Supreme Court has voted 6-3 that voter photo ID is constitutional. ~ Bob Ehrlich

What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights. ~ B.R. Ambedkar

The problem with today's culture is that we have too many rights and not enough wrongs. ~ Ron Brackin

When the function of libraries is put in terms of their contributions to the community, people see their centrality. The challenge to us is to continue to help them see it in those terms to describe our larger purposes. We must assert that libraries are central to the quality of life in our society; that libraries have a direct role in preserving democratic freedoms. Free access to information and the opportunity of every individual to improve his or her mind, employment prospects, and lifestyle are fundamental rights in our society. ~ Arthur Curley

We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

If you wish to have free access to the single market, then you have to accept the fundamental rights as well as obligation that come from it. ~ Angela Merkel

What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights. ~ Tom G. Palmer

The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices. ~ David Blunkett

Justice has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of compensation.
Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are concerned with equality in value.
If all men are equal, then all men are of the same essence, and the common essence entitles them of the same fundamental rights and equal liberty ...
In short justice is another name of liberty, equality and fraternity. ~ B.R. Ambedkar

Just as we Liberal Democrats opposed the flawed logic of that war in Iraq - we will oppose the flawed government claim that we have to surrender our fundamental rights in order to improve our security. ~ Charles Kennedy

We're talking about in the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8. ~ Kamala Harris

Fundamental rights belong to the human being just because you are a human being. ~ Desmond Tutu

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One s right to life liberty and property to free speech a free press freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote they depend on the outcome of no elections. ~ Robert H. Jackson

Antigay activists have historically maintained that same-sex sexuality is a lifestyle choice that should be discouraged, deemed illegitimate, and even punished by the culture at large. In other words, if lesbian/gay/bisexual people to not have to be gay but are simply choosing a path of decadence and deviance, then the government should have no obligation to protect their civil rights or honor their relationships; to the contrary, the state should actively condemn same-sex sexuality and deny it legal and social recognition in order to discourage others from following that path.
Not surprisingly, advocates for gay/lesbian/bisexual rights see things differently. They counter that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice but an inborn trait that is much beyond an individual's control as skin or eye color. Accordingly, since gay/lesbian/bisexual individuals cannot choose to be heterosexual, it is unethical to discriminate against them and to deny legal recognition to same-sex relationships.
(...)
Perhaps instead of arguing that gay/lesbian/bisexual individuals deserve civil rights because they are powerless to change their behavior, we should affirm the fundamental rights of all people to determine their own emotional and sexual lives. ~ Lisa Diamond

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. ~ William J. Brennan Jr.

The public is the tribunal before which all art is judged - not the critics or the academies. The public is the artist's only patron, and has certain fundamental rights. It will submit to education, and will respond to suggestion, but it will not be bullied. ~ Walter J. Phillips

Law matters, because it keeps us safe, because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms, and because it is the foundation of our democracy. ~ Elena Kagan

If he even drinks coffee. I don't. I only drink Green tea which is something close to blasphemy here in Italy where people worship coffee, where making a cup of coffee, be it espresso, macchiato, latte, or cappuccino, is an art in and of itself and where drinking coffee is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution. ~ Diane May

The act of taking my own life is not something that I do without a lot of thought. I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and to a place where there is no self, only calm. Love always, Wendy. ~ Wendy O. Williams

When you have incidences like the Trayvon Martin verdict, the erosion of certain fundamental rights like voting, it just reminds us that we're always one Supreme Court justice vote away from losing the progress that has been made. ~ Terri Sewell

One of the fundamental rights of mankind should be that of wearing as many or as few clothes as one likes inside one's own home. ~ Sachin Kundalkar

It is not fun to be pulled over by a police officer. We're upset or anxious when we're pulled over by the police. We often know what we did wrong and await the penalty, or we wonder what we did wrong and await the explanation. But, do we expect to be manhandled or abused by the officer? Do we fear that he might kill us? For black people, especially black men, those fears are too frequently an unfortunate reality. ~ Mark M. Bello

Our rights come from our Creator and it is impossible to define America if you do not talk in public about where your rights come from. ~ Newt Gingrich

John Coffey was torn open by what he had done ... but he would live. The girls would not. They had been torn open in a more fundamental way. ~ Stephen King

I realized that the legal system was corrupt when I went to court and the judge imposed a very short time limit on my evidence submission before removing my legal rights to free speech. ~ Steven Magee

Did I say "republic?" By God, yes, I said "republic!" Long live the glorious republic of the United States of America. Damn democracy. It is a fraudulent term used, often by ignorant persons but no less often by intellectual fakers, to describe an infamous mixture of socialism, graft, confiscation of property and denial of personal rights to individuals whose virtuous principles make them offensive. ~ Westbrook Pegler

But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights. ~ Garrett Hardin

There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad ... To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human rights records, add our bombing of Cambodia and the Pentagon Papers to taste, and then top with our recent refusals to sign the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse emissions, to support any ban on land mines, and to submit ourselves to the rulings of the International Criminal Court. The result should smell of death, hypocrisy, and fresh brimstone. ~ Sam Harris

The aspects of patriotism that hush dissent, encourage going along, and sanction comfortable distancing and compliance with what is indecent and unacceptable ... those aspects are too fundamental to ignore or gloss over. ~ Bernadine Dohrn

Weiss' account of the leading role in this campaign to limit Americans' free speech rights played by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Department of State is particularly troubling. We learn that Mrs. Clinton collaborated closely with the man who was at the time the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, through a series of high-level meetings that came to be known as "The Istanbul Process." Its explicit purpose was to find ways to accommodate the OIC's demands for the official stifling of any critical examination of Islam. ~ Deborah Weiss

There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. ~ Stokely Carmichael

Imprisonment is the form of punishment which may detrimentally affect not only the offender but also his family and his employment and because of its duration it can seldom be kept from becoming general public knowledge. It [ ... ] can have a lasting demoralising effect on the character and personality of the offender. The loss of liberty, tedium, regimentation [ ... ] which prison life entails, have a greater potentiality than a whipping for destroying the offender's self-esteem and the integrity of his character and for changing, for the worse, his way of life. ~ P.W. Thirion

To all those who struggle for human rights for LGTB people ~ Eli Easton

During my medical education at the University of Basle I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary ~ Carl Jung

No matter how few possessions you own or how little money you have, loving wildlife and nature will make you rich beyond measure. ~ Paul Oxton

For the first 200 years of our nation's history, corporations were never defined by the courts as persons with free speech rights under the First Amendment. Only in recent years have we witnessed this corporate takeover of our First Amendment, culminating in the Citizens United ruling. ~ John Bonifaz

Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing - this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing - is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths. ~ Neal Stephenson

While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect. ~ Barack Obama

One example of 21st century activism we are engaging in is All Out, a first-of-its-kind global movement to advance the interests and rights of LGBT people. All Out is bringing together people of all identities to build a world in which everyone can live freely and be embraced for who they are. ~ Jeremy Heimans

The fundamental religious objection to the theory of evolution is not scientific but moral. [Fundamentalists believe that] evolutionary theory must be opposed because it leads to rampant immorality, on both the personal and political scales. The basic cause of this immorality is atheism. ~ Elizabeth S. Anderson

But now science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways
air, and water, and land
because of ungovernable science. ~ Michael Crichton

Atheism is the default position in any scientific inquiry, just as a-quarkism or a-neutrinoism was. That is, any entity has to earn its admission into a scientific account either via direct evidence for its existence or because it plays some fundamental explanatory role. Before the theoretical need for neutrinos was appreciated (to preserve the conservation of energy) and then later experimental detection was made, they were not part of the accepted physical account of the world. To say physicists in 1900 were 'agnostic' about neutrinos sounds wrong: they just did not believe there were such things.

As yet, there is no direct experimental evidence of a deity, and in order for the postulation of a deity to play an explanatory role there would have to be a lot of detail about how it would act. If, as you have suggested, we are not "good judges of how the deity would behave," then such an unknown and unpredictable deity cannot provide good explanatory grounds for any phenomenon. The problem with the 'minimal view' is that in trying to be as vague as possible about the nature and motivation of the deity, the hypothesis loses any explanatory force, and so cannot be admitted on scientific grounds. Of course, as the example of quarks and neutrinos shows, scientific accounts change in response to new data and new theory. The default position can be overcome. ~ Tim Maudlin

We are now dealing with a bizarre new morality where a woman cannot simply say, in one way or another, "I'm on the pill because I like dick. ~ Roxane Gay

Self restraint in speech, food, entertainment and vanity are the most essential fundamental of spiritual growth. ~ Nouman Ali Khan

The question of woman's work in its economic aspect is really one not so much now of woman's rights as of woman's mights. Pretty much anything she wants to do, a resolute girl may now do. ~ R. Heber Newton

In the most basic of situations-- when we know what we are doing, when we are engaged with the familiar-- these fundamental tendencies suffice. Our actual situations, however, are almost always more complex. If things or situations were straightforwardly or simply positive or negative, good or bad, we would not have to make judgements regarding them, would not have to think about our behavior, and how and when it should be modified-- indeed, would not have to think at all. We are faced, however, with the constant problem of ambivalence in meaning, which is to say that a thing or situation might be bad and good simultaneously (or good in two conflicting manners; or bad, in two conflicting manners). ~ Jordan B. Peterson

Pakistan's future viability, stability and security lie in empowering its people and building political institutions. My goal is to prove that the fundamental battle for the hearts and minds of a generation can be accomplished only under democracy. ~ Benazir Bhutto

Harboring enmity and seeking revenge only perpetuates the power of oppressors to lord it over their victims long after the deed was done. Thus, at the most fundamental level, forgiveness spells liberation for the victim ~ Walter Wink

Adoptee rights are everyone's rights, and they deserve to be protected. ~ DaShanne Stokes

The United States presents a value system to the world that is based on democracy, based on economic freedom, based on individual rights for men and women, .. I think that is what makes us such a draw for nations around the world. People come to the United States to be educated, to become Americans. We are a country of countries and we touch every country, and every country in world touches us. ~ Colin Powell

We knew no one man had killed the prophet. Rather, the combined weight of racism and an absence of moral courage had crushed him. A constitution ignored, laws denied, these were the weapons. America pulled the trigger. ~ Marita Golden

On September 17, 1914, Erzberger, the well-known German statesman, an eminent member of the Catholic Party, wrote to the Minister of War, General von Falkenhayn, We must not worry about committing an offence against the rights of nations nor about violating the laws of humanity. Such feelings today are of secondary importance? A month later, on October 21, 1914, he wrote in Der Tag, If a way was found of entirely wiping out the whole of London it would be more humane to employ it than to allow the blood of A SINGLE GERMAN SOLDIER to be shed on the battlefield! ~ Georges Clemenceau

[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government. ~ Laurence Tribe

I'm looking for a person who understands my language and speaks it. A person who, without being a pariah, will question not only the rights and the values of the marginalized, but also those of the people who claim to be normal. ~ Xavier Dolan

The most fundamental of all questions that can possibly be asked is, 'Does God exist?' That is not to say that it is the foremost question on everybody's mind. You may well have decided that there is a God and have other questions that are more important to you than this one: How can I find peace and happiness? What does the future hold? How can I solve my personal problems? Other questions of this sort may be far more prominent issues. However, the existence of God has huge implications for all these others. ~ Joe Boot

Why can't everyone be treated equally? Forgotten of what they did wrong, but remember their rights? Why can't the whole world just get along? ~ Fei Loves Meng

Our life depends on others so much that at the root of our existence is a fundamental need for love. That is why it is good to cultivate an authentic sense of responsibility and concern for the welfare of others. ~ Dalai Lama