This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart - the best brain. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is the eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
Heart | Man | Men | Providence | Race | Reason | Rights | Strength |
Government exists to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection - they have many friends and few enemies.
Government | Need | Rights | Friends |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Liberty does not consist... in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite actions.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
What is at the heart of all our national problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions.
Heart | Possessions | Problems | Rights |
From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things - the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals - and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery. Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue. The animals had rights - the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, and the right to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness - and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing. This concept of life and its relations was humanizing, and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. The Lakota could despise no creature, for all were of one blood, made by the same hand, and filled with the essence of the Great Mystery. In spirit, the Lakota were humble and meek. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” - this was true for the Lakota, and from the earth they inherited secrets long since forgotten. Their religion was sane, natural, and human.
Brotherhood | Despise | Earth | Existence | Force | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mystery | Religion | Reverence | Right | Rights | Safe | Spirit | World | Friends |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Education as a political weapon could not exist if we respected the rights of children. If we respected the rights of children, we should educate them so as to give them the knowledge and the mental habits required for forming independent opinions; but education as a political institution endeavors to form habits and to circumscribe knowledge in such a way as to make one set of opinions inevitable.
Children | Education | Inevitable | Knowledge | Rights |
Benjamin Cardozo, fully Benjamin Nathan Cardozo
To enforce one's rights when they are violated is never a legal wrong, and may often be a moral duty.
Since man created government to help secure and safeguard [inalienable] rights [from God], it follows that man is superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around.
Government | Man | Rights | Government |
The Declaration of Independence . . . is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto—revelation, if you will—declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights. Nephi, a Book of Mormon prophet, foresaw over 2,300 years ago that this event would transpire. The colonies he saw would break with Great Britain and that 'the power of the Lord was with [the colonists],' that they 'were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations' (1 Nephi 13:16, 19). "The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition—the divine right of kings. At issue was the fundamental question of whether men's rights were God-given or whether these rights were to be dispensed by governments to their subjects. This document proclaimed that all men have certain inalienable rights. In other words, these rights came from God.
God | Justification | Lord | Men | Power | Question | Rebellion | Right | Rights | God |
It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guarantee of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution.
Faith | Force | Free speech | Guarantee | Means | Order | Power | Reason | Rights | Speech | Child |
Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Free speech | Rights | Speech |
Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?
Authority | Global | Hunger | Man | Rights | System | Waste | Wealth | Woman | Child |
French National Assembly - Declaration of the Rights of Man NULL
Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
French National Assembly - Declaration of the Rights of Man NULL
The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law
Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Nobody talks more passionately of his rights than he who, in the depths of his soul, is doubtful about harm.
Rights |
Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds.