Inalienable Quotes

The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual, rights which they found implicit in the Bible's teachings of the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. This same sense of man patterned the convictions of those who framed the English system of law inherited by our own Nation, as well as the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. ~ Ronald Reagan

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. ~ Robert Frost

Here's the truth, unvarnished and inalienable: I wanted him. I'd always wanted him. I could pretend otherwise, I could walk away, I could avoid him for two years, but it didn't change a thing. Dylan was mine. First, last, and always. ~ Viv Daniels

All my actions have their rise in my inalienable love of mankind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world. ~ Nelson Mandela

For this decision, too, he had submitted to the overwhelming force of Sharon's personality, whose longings and needs seemed inalienable rights, whereas Marcus's were merely whims. ~ Panio Gianopoulos

The freedom to share one's insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes. ~ Karl Friedrich Bahrdt

By the way
we also hold these truths to be self evident
that all men are created equal
that they have been endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights
that among these are life
Liberty
& the pursuit of Happiness
& last but not least
that 2+2 makes 4
unless otherwise instructed ~ Nicanor Parra

You want to check your legal position, you do, mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job, aren't we? I mean, what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning? ~ Douglas Adams

[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men. ~ James Madison

The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds - for the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual, are absolutely, the strongest in our being: stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease. ~ Oliver Sacks

You find nothing like that among humans. Yes, human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries. Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there 1,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago?
The (unratified) Preamble of the European Constitution begins by stating that it draws inspiration 'from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which "have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law'.3 This may easily give one the impression that European civilisation is defined by the values of human rights, democracy, equality and freedom. Countless speeches and documents draw a direct line from ancient Athenian democracy to the present-day EU, celebrating 2,500 years of European freedo ~ Yuval Noah Harari

This country was founded upon the principle that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - those rights are what make America great, and they belong to each and every one of us. ~ Charles B. Rangel

If a man's free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action - his freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world - is not in such a fortunate condition. ~ Murray Rothbard

When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them. ~ Helen Keller

This is America ... where every adult shall have the full and inalienable right to eat her young ~ Dennis Lehane

I feel it urgent to state that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother's womb, that no alleged right to one's own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the "property" of another human being. The family protects human life in all its stages, including its last. Consequently, "those who work in healthcare facilities are reminded of the moral duty of conscientious objection. Similarly, the Church not only feels the urgency to assert the right to a natural death, without aggressive treatment and euthanasia", but likewise firmly rejects the death penalty. ~ Pope Francis

Factual information alone isn't sufficient to guide you through life's labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular deliveries of uncanny revelation. One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to receive a mysteriously useful omen every day of your life. ~ Rob Brezsny

All children are really orphans. At heart, a child has nothing to do with its parents, its background, its last name, its gender, its family trade. It is a brand-new person, and it is born with the only legacy that all individuals inherit when they open their eyes in this world: the
inalienable right to be free. ~ Heather O'Neill

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man. ~ Thomas Jefferson

She made us realize that human dignity is inalienable, and as long as there is still breath left in your body, there will always be something left to fight for. ~ Sam A. Patel

To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. ~ Pope John Paul II

Alice's predicament in Wonderland is a familiar one to modern women: She's a post-Enlightenment girl in a persistently feudal world. She perceives herself as a subject with inalienable rights, but she's perceived, variously, as an interloper, a servant, a threat, an object, a bother, a girl. Alice believes this can be remedied with information. She believes that if she explains and assets herself, if she reasonably points out the facts, then she will shift the perception. At the very least, she thinks, she can learn the rules and fit in. So, she tries. She takes others' good faith for granted. She makes her case again and again. She tries to learn their rules. But she is eternally frustrated, because Wonderland is governed not by reason or rules but by ideology, faith, superstition, and fear. Something is real if you believe it's real, if you continually affirm its existence. It disappears if you don't, subsumed into a parallel universe. ~ Carina Chocano

It came with a stirring of the conviction that was never to leave her: that human being, whatever his color or creed or sex, had certain inalienable rights which other human beings had no right to violate. ~ Margaret Landon

Today, racism is regarded as a crime if practiced by a majority - but as an inalienable right if practiced by a minority. The notion that one's culture is superior to all others solely because it represents the traditions of one's ancestors, is regarded as chauvinism if claimed by a majority - but as 'ethnic' pride if claimed by a minority. Resistance to change and progress is regarded as reactionary if demonstrated by a majority - but retrogression to a Balkan village, to an Indian tepee or to the jungle is hailed if demonstrated by a minority. ~ Ayn Rand

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument. ~ Rich Burlew

Democracy maintains that government is established for the benefit of the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the individual and his freedom in the exercise of his abilities. Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice. ~ Harry S. Truman

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. ~ Baz Luhrmann

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. ~ Calvin Coolidge

To tell an adult exactly what steps to take towards his salvation was apt to weaken him. It deprived him of his inalienable right to trial and error which was tonic to the character. ~ Frances Gray Patton

History has shown time and time again that
there is no such thing as all things being equal. That is why Jefferson
wrote that our inalienable rights were life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. Nothing is guaranteed in life, especially happiness. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. ~ Ronald Reagan

Death, of course, like chastity, admits of no degree; a man is dead or not dead, and a man is just as dead by one means as by another; but it is infinitely more horrible and revolting to see a man shattered and eviscerated, than to see him shot. And one sees such things; and one suffers vicariously, with the inalienable sympathy of man for man. One forgets quickly. The mind is averted as well as the eyes. It reassures itself after that first despairing cry: "It is I!"
"No, it is not I. I shall not be like that."
And one moves on, leaving the mauled and bloody thing behind: gambling, in fact, on that implicit assurance each one of us has of his own immortality. One forgets, but he will remember again later, if only in his sleep. ~ Frederic Manning

Dignity is something that all human beings have in common. We are all (all of us who have attained the "age of reason," that is) subject to its demands, whatever place in society we may happen to occupy, and it is this that gives us our inalienable inner value. ~ Michael Rosen

Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job, aren't we? ~ Douglas Adams

A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Was it the shrill, sickly tone I heard everywhere that I couldn't stand, the one that arose from all the pseudo people and pseudo places, pseudo events and pseudo conflicts our lives passed through, that which we saw but did not participate in, and the distance that modern life in this way had opened up to our own, actually inalienable here and now? ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people. ~ Jacques Delors

The United States was founded on the idea that all people are endowed with inalienable rights, and that principle has allowed us to work to perfect our union at home while standing as a beacon of hope to the world. Today, that principle is embodied in agreements Americans helped forge - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and treaties against torture and genocide - and it unites us with people from every country and culture. ~ Barack Obama

[A] people needs to understand what freedom is. We Americans are fortunate that the Founders and their generation possessed that understanding. They knew that freedom, per se, is not enough. They knew that freedom must be limited to be preserved. This paradox is difficult for many students to grasp. Young people generally think freedom means authority figures leaving them alone so they can "do their own thing." That's part of what it means to be free, but true freedom involves much, much more. As understood by our Founders and by the best minds of the young republic, true freedom is always conditioned by morality. John Adams wrote, "I would define liberty as a power to do as we would be done by." In other words, freedom is not the power to do what one can, but what one ought. Duty always accompanies liberty. Tocqueville similarly observed, "No free communities ever existed without morals." The best minds concur: there must be borders: freedom must be limited to be preserved.

What kinds of limits are we talking about?
* The moral limits of right and wrong, which we did not invent but owe largely to our Judeo-Christian heritage.
* Intellectual limits imposed by sound reasoning. Again, we did not invent these but are in debt largely to Greco-Roman civilization, from the pre-Socratic philosophers forward.
* Political limits such as the rule of law, inalienable rights, and representative institutions, which we inherited primarily from the British.
* ~ Russell Kirk

Any nations right to a form of government and economic system of its own choosing is inalienable. Any nations attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right ... Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs. ~ Hannah Arendt

Finally, it is no longer completely fantastic to think that a day may come when not the executioners alone will deny the inalienable rights of men, but when even the victims will not be able to say why it is that they are suffering injustice. ~ Josef Pieper

Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in government. ~ Carrie Chapman Catt

Our nation sought to rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and personhood of those who for so long had been silenced, had been turned into anonymous, marginalized ones. Now they would be able to tell their stories, they would remember, and in remembering would be acknowledged to be persons with an inalienable personhood. Our country's negotiators rejected the two extremes and opted for a "third way," a compromise between the extreme of Nuremberg trials and blanket amnesty or national amnesia. And that third way was granting amnesty to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure relating to the crime for which amnesty was being sought. It was the carrot of possible freedom in exchange for truth and the stick was, for those already in jail, the prospect of lengthy prison sentences and, for those still free, the probability of arrest and prosecution and imprisonment. The option South Africa chose raises ~ Desmond Tutu

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity ... ~ Joe Biden

But I finally concluded that it is an inalienable right of lovers everywhere to become temporarily worthless to the world, it may even be their duty. ~ David James Duncan

Every person has the inalienable right to a decent environment. ~ Gaylord Nelson

I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given. ~ Sarah Palin

The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct their lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings.they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable. ~ Ruth Benedict

Our responsibility before God is an inalienable aspect of our human dignity. Its final expression will be on the day of judgment. Nobody will be sentenced without trial. ~ John R.W. Stott

Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: "I'll do as I please at everybody else's expense." An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man - his own and those of others. ~ Ayn Rand

Man's nature, it is said, must necessarily become corrupt. God could not endow him with sinlessness, which is an inalienable portion of Divine perfection. But if God could not render him sinless, why did He take the trouble of creating man, whose nature was to become corrupt, and which, consequently, had to offend God? On the other side, if God Himself was not able to render human nature sinless, what right had He to punish men for not being sinless? ~ Jean Meslier

The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existant and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. ~ Sri Aurobindo

There is no hope for the world unless and until we formulate, accept and state publicly a true moral code of individualism, based on man's inalienable right to live for himself. Neither to hurt nor to serve his brothers, but to be independent of them in his function and in his motive. Neither to sacrifice them for himself nor to sacrifice himself for them ... ~ Ayn Rand

What should move us to action is human dignity: the inalienable dignity of the oppressed, but also the dignity of each of us. We lose dignity if we tolerate the intolerable. ~ Dominique De Menil

We have, because human, an inalienable prerogative of responsibility which we cannot devolve, no, not as once was thought, even upon the stars. We can share it only with each other ~ Charles Scott Sherrington

Too many Americans now believe that the checks they receive every month from the unemployment office - like the checks they get from the welfare office, from Medicare, from Social Security - are inalienable rights. They are not. ~ Ben Shapiro

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to
make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an
incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the
liberty to introduce persons to one another without first
ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and
the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of
strangers. ~ Ambrose Bierce

It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator. ~ Tom Stoppard

The right of each individual in any relation to secure to himself the full benefits of his intelligence, his capacity, his industry and skill are among the inalienable inheritances of humanity. ~ Leland Stanford

Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It is the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child to wear khaki. ~ Lisa Birnbach

Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. ~ Ayn Rand

The Church had the words reason and liberty on her lips when the inalienable rights of the human race were threatened with shipwreck. ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights. ~ Cory Booker

I am a free lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please. ~ Victoria Woodhull

Tenets of a viable 21st century conservatism

1. The fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid.

2. Peaceful social being is preferable to isolation and to war. In consequence, it justly and rightly demands some sacrifice of individual impulse and idiosyncrasy.

3. Hierarchies of competence are desirable and should be promoted.

4. Borders are reasonable. Likewise, limits on immigration are reasonable. Furthermore, it should not be assumed that citizens of societies that have not evolved functional individual-rights predicated polities will hold values in keeping with such polities.
5. People should be paid so that they are able and willing to perform socially useful and desirable duties.

6. Citizens have the inalienable right to benefit from the result of their own honest labor.

7. It is more noble to teach young people about responsibilities than about rights.

8. It is better to do what everyone has always done, unless you have some extraordinarily valid reason to do otherwise.

9. Radical change should be viewed with suspicion, particularly in a time of radical change.

10. The government, local and distal, should leave people to their own devices as much as possible.

11. Intact heterosexual two-parent families constitute the necessary bedrock for a stable polity.

12. We should judge our political system in comparison to other actual p ~ Jordan B. Peterson

The Hell with Hospitals [10w]
We've an inalienable right to die in our own homes. ~ Beryl Dov

MIT is governed by a second, even higher rule: the inalienable right of academic freedom. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

...[M]an and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must always be regarded at the same time as an end... [R]ational beings... are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is, as something which must not be used merely as means, and so far therefore restricts freedom of action (and is an object of respect). ~ Immanuel Kant

The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right - subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility. ~ L. Neil Smith

I am an ardent supporter of capitalism - but I also understand that while individuals have inalienable, God-given rights, corporations do not. ~ Gary Hamel

There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept 'just a few controls' is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government's unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States. ~ Ayn Rand

It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining ~ Wallace D. Wattles

True unalienable rights do not require one to trample other unalienable rights. ~ J.S.B. Morse

We were endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We were not endowed by the Federal Government. We were not endowed by entitlements. We were not endowed by pork barrel spending; we were not endowed by budgetary earmarks. ~ Lawrence Kudlow

I believe that God has endowed men with certain inalienable rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and that no legislature and no majority, however great, may morally limit or destroy these; that the sole function of government is to protect life, liberty, and property, and anything more than this is usurpation and oppression. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing. ~ George Bernard Shaw

We are today engaged in a war. It is an economic war over our
sovereignty as human beings with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. The "pursuit of happiness" means the right
to create wealth through our labor and to enjoy the fruits thereof.
The battle now is over who has the moral, the ethical, and the legal
right to the fruits of our labor. Are we to be free, or are we to be
slaves? Just whose money is it anyway? ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

I was born into this world without knowing what life was all about. Only power promised fulfillment in life, and I have pursued it--long enough to recognize that it's a false promise and that this road leads to nothing. But I tried. Even if we get no answers to our questions, it is the inalienable right of every living being to search for them--by all means, on all paths, and with all strength. What I did was only what I had a right to do. ~ Andreas Eschbach

We are superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

It is a universally acknowledged, inalienable truth that a knitter faced with the unadorned neck, head, and hands of a person she cares for feels an overwhelming compulsion to smother that person in fancy hand-knits. ~ Penny Reid

Government exists to protect the product of men's labor, their property, and therewith life and liberty. The notion that man possesses inalienable natural rights, that they belong to him as an individual prior, both in time and in sanctity, to any civil society, and that civil societies exist for and acquire their legitimacy from ensuring those rights, is an invention of modern philosophy. Rights, like the other terms discussed in this chapter, are new in modernity, not a part of the common-sense language of politics or of classical political philosophy." from "Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow, Andrew Ferguson ~ Allan Bloom

Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves. ~ Germaine Greer

The Past, being in the mode of memory, is closed, inalienable, and irreparable ... ~ Susanne Katherina Langer

Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author ~ Thomas Jefferson

Our philosophy precedes from the belief that sport is an inalienable part of the educational process and a factor for promoting peace, friendship, cooperation and understanding among peoples. ~ Juan Antonio Samaranch

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is. He may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because "God is not a what," not a "thing." That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no "what" that can be called God. There is "no such thing" as God because God is neither a "what" nor a "thing" but a pure "Who."* He is the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs into awareness. He is the I Am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo "I am. ~ Thomas Merton

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that. ~ Mike Huckabee

People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.
All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.
Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual. ~ Terry Goodkind

Well, it's an unimaginable honor to be the president during the Fourth of July of this country. It means what these words say, for starters. The great inalienable rights of our country. We're blessed with such values in America. And I - it's - I'm a proud man to be the nation based upon such wonderful values. ~ George W. Bush

It is a natural impossibility for any man to make a binding contract, by which he shall surrender to others a single one of what are commonly called his 'natural, inherent, inalienable rights.' ~ Lysander Spooner

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs, which are an inalienable right, are regarded as criminal. ~ Baruch Spinoza

A man becomes a solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be his external surroundings, he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude and sees that he will never be anything but solitary. ~ Thomas Merton

It is through generous giving, that we affirm before the world, our nation's faith in the inalienable right of every man, to a life of freedom, justice and security. ~ Harry S. Truman