Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [41-60] of 198 Civil Rights quotesCivil Rights QuotesCivil Rights Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism.~ Henry Steele Commager We the People of the united States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.~ Constitution for the USA Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source -- from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.~ John Dickinson Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.~ Justice William O. Douglas The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.~ Justice William O. Douglas A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.~ Justice William O. Douglas The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgment the great postulate of our democracy.~ Justice William O. Douglas Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.~ Frederick Douglass Of all the tasks of government, the most basic is to protect its citizens from violence.~ John Foster Dulles They [the founders] proclaimed to all the world the revolutionary doctrine of the divine rights of the common man. That doctrine has ever since been the heart of the American faith.~ Dwight D. Eisenhower The right to freedom of expression is justified first of all as the right of an individual purely in his capacity as an individual. It derives from the widely accepted premise of Western thought that the proper end of man is the realization of his character and potentialities as a human being.~ Thomas I. Emerson I think that prohibition of drugs is the most immoral program that the United States has ever engaged in. It's destroyed civil rights at home and it is responsible for thousands of deaths abroad.~ Milton Friedman Under the privilege of the First Amendment many, many ridiculous things are said.~ John Kenneth Galbraith The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.~ Albert Gallatin The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.~ Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.~ Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.~ Jean Genet Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite; who made ten thousand people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?~ David Lloyd George Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.~ William Godwin Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.~ Hermann Goering Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print