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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Related quotes
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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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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Sacred Election
Sacred
sacred right,
the right to vote.
Sacred
sacred right
to be elected.
The people's votes are tallied
The best choice is declared.
Let no one manipulate the result
Let no one tamper the votes
Let no one buy people's votes
and strip the voters
their sacred right to choose.
Let this election
truly reflect
people's sacred rights.
___________________
November 6,2012
poem by Elizabeth Padillo Olesen

Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Bill, For The Bill of Rights
The political-democracy picking the aristocracy
Like the slaves picked cotton
We the people are totally forgotten
We the people are totally forgotten
Poor people pay the ultimate price
Coersive persuasion –a mind control device
Willingly give your life as a sacrifice
Then die for a cause that violates human rights laws
Economic sanctions aimed at the poor
Carpet bombing civilians desecrates laws of war
When government becomes God, for economic gains
The Bill of Rights wanes, wanes, wanes
Zero tolerance for violence is galore, in the times of war
The whole world saturated with the Blood of The Poor
The cost of freedom, war’s consummate whore
Business interests favor war, as it’s savior
poem by Josephine DixonBanks

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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

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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People Who Believe They Are Indispensible
People who believe they are indispensible...
Are the ones ready to kill.
Believing the experience of life,
Is theirs to give and take at will.
Like a cancer that spreads,
Without a cure...
People like these,
Have missions of evil to fulfill.
People who believe this world is theirs...
Destroy and destruct,
Without a consciousness known...
Or Shown they care.
They assume they have rights,
To tell others what to do...
Day and night.
And when they discover they are wrong...
They can not live with themselves.
Staying awake to make decisions,
Others are the ones that do not belong!
So they make excuses...
To murder!
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

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I want to know how these very people who are against war because of loss of life can possibly be the same people who are for abortion? They are the same people who are for animal rights, but they are not for the rights of the unborn.
quote by Jim Gibbons

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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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

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.
quote by Elihu Root

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Human Rights’
In a civilised land
That accepts duty to all
Citizens have rights
Some great, some small
This is how things should be
To those who value
Truth and fairness
And justice and decency
But those who treasure money
And the power of wealth
Seek to remove such rights
Through deceit and stealth
They claim that duty
Comes before such rights
But they accept no obligation
For causing another’s plight
Obligation before rights
Is their loud refrain
But fulfilling their own duties
Is something they distain
For rights are for the powerful
Whilst duty is for the poor
And decency and justice
The Country provides no more
Human Rights matter
To ensure justice for all
For saints and for sinners
For all people great and small
The alternative is ugly
With justice a forgotten myth
With power replacing fairness
And a society that is truly sick
poem by David Chalk

Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Get Up, Stand Up
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: dont give up the fight!
Preacherman, dont tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you dont know
What life is really worth.
Its not all that glitters is gold;
alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: dont give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: dont give up the fight!
Most people think,
Great God will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah!)
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo!)
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up!)
Dont give up the fight! (life is your right!)
Get up, stand up! (so we cant give up the fight!)
Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord!)
Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on!)
Dont give up the fight! (yeah!)
We sick an tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin n goin to heaven in-a jesus name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty God is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you cant fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do? ),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah!)
So you better:
Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up!)
Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights!)
Get up, stand up!
Dont give up the fight! (dont give it up, dont give it up!)
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up!)
Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up!)
Get up, stand up! ( ... )
Dont give up the fight! (get up, stand up!)
Get up, stand up! ( ... )
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up!
Dont give up the fight! /fadeout/
song performed by by Bob Marley

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.
quote by Thomas Sowell

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.
quote by Indira Gandhi

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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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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A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
quote by Thomas Jefferson

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Anarchists
The leaders of this country,
Think were the ones that do wrong,
They take control of the power,
and steal this land of forgotten freedom
Its not the people afraid of the government,
Its the government afraid of the people
They call the ones dressed in black,
The evil ones but we fight back,
We've got hackers, we've got protesters,
we let no man left behind
Its not the people afraid of the government,
Its the government afraid of the people
The unions dressed in black,
With their flag raised up high,
Don't take no for an answer,
As the forces stain the streets with blood
Its not the people afraid of the government,
Its the government afraid of the people
We fight for the people,
Our obligation is good as gold,
And though we fight with arms of steel,
we don't let death go in vein
Its not the people afraid of the government,
Its the government afraid of the people
poem by Bing D'Amico

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It was the best route to get folks to understand segregation fast. Civil rights and women's rights had a clear history. Making the transition to rights for people with disabilities became easier because we had the history of the other two.
quote by Major Owens

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.
quote by Richard Mentor Johnson

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights.
quote by Potter Stewart

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Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power — absolutely non-democratic — reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy. We citizens are not fulfilling our duties either. Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.
quote by Jose Saramago

Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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