Exercising Rights Quotes & Sayings

Only in America - the land of the free - can an innocent person be forced to plead the Fifth for exercising their First Amendment rights. Say what you want, but you better shut your fucking pie hole if it offends someone's delicate sensibilities. — Kendall Grey

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. — David Brin

We should distinguish at this point between "government" and "state" ... A government is the consensual organization by which we adjudicate disputes, defend our rights, and provide for certain common needs ... A state on the other hand, is a coercive organization asserting or enjoying a monopoly over the use of physical force in some geographic area and exercising power over its subjects. — David Boaz

It's never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to 'control protestors' - especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent. — Michael Hastings

Implementation of the Declaration is about implementing our rights. You do not ask for rights; you assert them. When rights are asserted, they grow. No state will "give" rights to Indigenous peoples, and no state will "offer" them. Indigenous peoples must assert and exercise our inherent rights. Exercising our rights is what makes us who we are. — Jackie Hartley

Rights are liable to be perverted to wrongs when we are incapable of rightly exercising them. — Sarah Josepha Hale

Whether children have first amendment rights is a vexed legal question, but what is not in question is that they someday will. Constraining them from expressing their views is no preparation for exercising those rights. — Crispin Sartwell

Obama wanted to offer his support to birth control activist Sandra Fluke. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy. — Jay Carney

I went to Ferguson and walked with the demonstrators and saw this heavily armed police force, tactical units pointing sniper rifles at my constituents who were there exercising their constitutional rights. — William Lacy Clay Jr.

Never be silent! Make your opinions known, and do not fear retribution for speaking your mind! The only ones who will aggressively try to silence you are the ones who do not respect the liberties and rights of the individual. Those people deserve our contempt, and when you draw them out of the shadows by exercising your civil right to freedom of speech, they will expose themselves for what they truly are. — Derek R. Audette

Dark feelings can become a habit. And if they're strong enough, like many strong feelings, they can even be enjoyable. — Deirdre Madden

It was Dominick Gleeson, aka Big Dom, editor of the city's only newspaper, the Bohane Vindicator. Of course, it was in no small part thanks to Logan Hartnett that the Vindicator remained the city's only newspaper. Its masthead solgan: 'Truth or Vengeance', as inked above a motif of two quarrelling ravens. — Kevin Barry

I urge the citizens of Ferguson who have been peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters, vandals and others seeking to inflame tensions and sow discord. — Eric Holder

After the Stonewall riots the gay activists had their idealistic hearts in the right place but it turned out they had underestimated the realpolitik of organized crime. Indeed, as gay liberation blossomed in the wild 1970s the bars and bathhouses became increasingly lucrative enterprises, and the Mafia had no intention of abandoning a racket it had controlled for decades. The Mafia families maintained their control by exercising the proverbial carrot and stick. The wise guys seemingly embraced the gay rights movement and cut more so-called Auntie Gays into the action as their fronts, and resorted to violent threats and sometimes murder against others who refused to play ball with the crime families. There were few legitimate businessmen in gay nightlife of the 1970s. — Phillip Crawford Jr.

Do I have a problem with Larry Ellison buying Sun? No, that's part of the capitalist system. As soon as we go public we're for sale, that's part of the deal. And do I have a problem with him exercising his intellectual property rights? No, I don't have a problem with that. Would it be how we necessarily ran and operated? Obviously not. — Scott McNealy

Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights - that's suppression by any light. — Artur Davis

The fact that most states are born of violent upheaval does not, of course, mean that disorder leads to order. In writing the history of events that are still unfolding in a state that is still unformed, it is impossible to know which tendencies will prevail and at what price. The safest position is the human rights position, which measures regimes on a strictly negative scale as the sum of their crimes and their abuses: if you damn all offenders and some later mend their ways, you can always take credit for your good influence. Unfortunately, the safest position may not necessarily be the wisest, and I wondered whether there is room
even a need
for exercising political judgment in such matters. — Philip Gourevitch

In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar. — Thomas Jefferson

Shattered dreams, worthless years, here I am encased in a hollow shell. Life began, then was done, now I stare into a cold and empty well. — Stevie Wonder

Interestingly, Marxism, Communism and its derivative, Socialism, when seen years later in practice, are nothing but state-capitalism and rule by a privileged minority, exercising despotic and total control over a majority which is left with virtually no property or legal rights. — Andrew Carrington Hitchcock

She looked as if she knew exactly when the world would end. — Katlyn Charlesworth

People have the right to protest - that's what democracy is all about. I have no problem with people exercising their democratic rights. — Condoleezza Rice

Advocating well with a personal story is not a call to simply Insert Story Here. — John Capecci And Timothy Cage

However, they ignore the fact that the First Amendment is intended to protect only against government sanctions for exercising free speech rights, not private actions. — Ed Koch

To trust any man is the road to slavery. — Evangeline Walton

We wouldn't have to take your rights away if you'd just stop exercising them. — Carl-John X. Veraja