It is unfortunate that Americans are no longer aware of what the constitution says and what their rights are. Because of that, we are often very passive about what happens when the government violates those rights.
quote by James Bovard
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.
quote by Barbara Boxer
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. … We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.
quote by John F. Kennedy
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Dont You Think It's Time?
children have rights,
women have rights.
lovers have rights.
people of all religions,
and even atheists have rights.
people of all colors,
speaking every language have rights.
trees and rivers have rights.
cats and dogs have rights.
cattle have rights,
homeless people have rights.
prisoners have rights.
democrats and republicans have rights,
even socialists have rights.
the jobless have rights,
old people have rights...
and the hungry have
the right to be fed!
damnit! dont you think it's time?
poem by Eric Cockrell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.
quote by Marquis de Lafayette
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Racism Poem - Where Racism matters
i live in a country
multi racial in nature
where certain communities
enjoy special rights
the politicians keep asking
why there is racial polarisation
well, if i have special rights
i will make sure i really
get the best deal of it all
i will not be a stupid fool
or even modest
no two way about it
that includes telling others
to be aware that they do
not have special rights
drawing the line doubly clear
just in case they
infringe on these rights
rights to everything special
housing, education,
medication, career advances
etc, etc, etc
and of course
i would make
every citizen aware
they are living in a society
where racism matters
because it is a matter
of life and death
for those with special rights
and of course for those
without the rights to
keep decently quiet about it
or else these special rights
could mean the rights
to take away things
dearest to them
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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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.
quote by William J. Brennan, Jr.
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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But today, government is taking those rights from us, pretending that it gives us our rights. Indeed, those rights come from God, and it was recognized throughout our history as such.
Equal Rights,2011
equal rights to live,
equal rights to love.
equal rights to believe,
to speak out, to stand up
and be counted.
equal rights to work,
equal rights to study.
equal rights to build.
equal rights to profess faith,
equal rights to pray.
equal rights to give...
equal rights to live,
equal rights to love!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
quote by Thomas Jefferson
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It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go; and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition Acts, and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits; let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on the President, and the President of our choice has assented to and accepted, over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country and its laws had pledged hospitality and protection; that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the President than the solid rights of innocence, the claims of justification, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and justice. In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
quote by Thomas Jefferson
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that marriage is one of the most fundamental rights that we have as Americans under our Constitution.
The Constitution guarantees us our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's all. It doesn't guarantee our rights to charity.
quote by Jesse Ventura
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.
quote by Elena Kagan
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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.
quote by David Boies
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Each state, so that it does not abridge the great fundamental rights belonging, under the Constitution, to all citizens, may grant or withhold such civil rights as it pleases; all that is required is that, in this respect, its laws shall be impartial.
quote by Lyman Trumbull
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The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
quote by James Madison
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How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed.
quote by Auberon Herbert
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The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.
quote by Joichi Ito
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Some of them, in accepting the proposed plan of government, coupled their acceptance with a recommendation of various additions to the Constitution, which they deemed essential to the preservation of the rights of the States, or of the People.
quote by Caleb Cushing
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You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.
quote by William Lloyd Garrison
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