Right To Self Defense Quotes & Sayings

As far as I was concerned, the Panthers were 'baaaaaad.' The Party was more than bad; it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them. — Assata Shakur

Due to the oath I swore to the constitution when I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, by virtue of the universal human right to self defense, in accordance with the Supreme Court case, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the statutes under which I am being charged are unconstitutional and thus null and void, and on behalf of all freedom loving Americans, I plead not guilty. — Adam Kokesh

I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense. — Cass Sunstein

The Constitution gives you the right, as a white man, to have a rifle in your home. The Constitution gives you the right to protect yourself. Why is it 'ominous' when black people even talk of having rifles? Why don't we have the right to self-defense? Is it because maybe you know we're going to have to defend ourselves against you? — James Baldwin

As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense. — John O. Brennan

And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self preservation and defense. — William Blackstone

For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say! — Wilhelm Reich

In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder - is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise? — Frederic Bastiat

No party has renounced the right to armed resistance, in certain circumstances without lying — Friedrich Engels

There's a small moment in this chapter when Bella wants to practice fighting techniques with Emmett, but Edward won't let her.
Emmett is here? Hi Emmett! Hey Emmett, according to Google Maps, you live 2,931 miles away from me. If I don't make any stops for food or fuel, and sit on a pile of absorbent kitty litter, I can make the trip in 48 hours. So I can be there by Sunday or Monday. Oh ... hey, did you know Monday is Valentine's Day? That's super weird, right? Didn't plan that at all. I swear. OK, see you then!
Anyway, Bella wants to practice with Emmett but Edward says no. Huh? Not only does Edward refuse to teach his wife basic self-defense, but she can't even learn some tips from The Pain Maker? Why? I dare you to explain this. I double wolf dare you. — Dan Bergstein

Israel has the right to shell Palestinian hospitals and schools out of self defense ... — Elizabeth Warren

Our pride is tied up in being right. We tend to favor data that confirm our beliefs, so we don't see alternatives. Too often, leaders practice defense routines that become self-reinforcing. — Nina Easton

The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one's own nature. — Georg Buchner

One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defense, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it. — Edmund Burke

Without the right to defend yourself
and the right to possesss the means to do it
all other supposed rights are so much hot air. — James Carlos Blake

Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice? — Frederic Bastiat

The human instinct for self-preservation is strong. I know, because mine pulls at me, too, like the needle on a compass. And everybody - I've been reading some philosophy - everybody seems to agree that the instinct and responsibility of all humans is to take care of themselves first. You have the right to self-defense. You have the right to survive, if you can. — Nancy Werlin

Remember, we all make our work available in a commercial transaction, the terms of which we, ourselves, dictate. If we give it away for free, that's our decision, and there is no refuge in the lame defense, "what do you want for nothing?" The buyer does not waive his right to express his opinion."
[Thick Skin and Bad Reviews, Blog post, June 26, 2013] — Pete Morin

You do not have the right to take another human's life, unless it's in strict self-defense. — Michael Moore

I don't claim to be the best musician. If being the best means I earn the right to look down on people and critique their accomplishments in defense of my own, I don't ever want to be. People can say what they want about my music being 'banal' and my skill level 'competent,' and it will hurt my feelings (because despite what some believe, I do still have them), but I won't let it determine my self-worth. — Lindsey Stirling

The Second Amendment does protect the right to people to possess weapons for self-defense in the home. That's what the Supreme Court said. — Laurence Tribe

When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense - to fight the government. — Alexander Hamilton

It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach. — Rick Scott

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government. — Alexander Hamilton

It felt odd to have interrupted the life of someone she knew nothing about, to kill someone she had only just met, as though killing needed intimacy, deep knowledge of the other, to make it all right. — Pamela Freeman

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. — Ayn Rand

The right of self defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals, and whether the attack be made by Spain herself or by those who abuse her power, its obligation is not the less strong. — James Monroe

I often say that sociology is a martial art, a means of self-defense. Basically, you use it to defend yourself, without having the right to use it for unfair attacks. — Pierre Bourdieu

Gun laws are an attempt to nationalize the right of self-defense. Politicians perennially react to the police's abject failure to prevent crime by trying to disarm law-abiding citizens. The worse government fails to control crime, the more the politicians want to restrict individuals' rights to defend themselves. But police protection in most places is typical government work - slow, inefficient, and unreliable ... — James Bovard

Certain bedrock principles arguably a true conservative mindset dictate a respect for life. A life-conserving sensibility means that guns are meant for self-defense, not for needless killing[ ... ] This gun owner is no gun nut; but a right-to-self-defense fanatic. — Ilana Mercer

Every fascist state like Germany, France, or modern Poland takes away citizen's right to self-defense. Fascist Americans such as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton want to take arms away from American society. — Janusz Korwin-Mikke

I have asserted the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense - and have acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence. — Robert F. Williams

For us to ignore by inaction the slaughter of American civilians and American soldiers, whether in nightclubs or airline terminals, is simply not in the American tradition. Self-defense is not only our right, it is our duty. — Ronald Reagan

The bigger the lie, the more believable it becomes to the average Arab citizen. Thus, Arab media never fail to be less than outrageous. They blamed the defeat on none other than Israel, as though self-defense and self-preservation was not a right to be exercised by the Jewish enemy. — Nonie Darwish

No man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man-or group or society or government-has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. — Ayn Rand

The first right of every human being is the right of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our Constitution. — Larry Craig

Given the genocidal belligerence of Iranian threats against Israel, it is hard to take issue with Israel's right to preemptive self-defense. — Conrad Black

As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law. — Martin Luther King Jr.