Wise Quotes about Rights

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.

The highest result of education is tolerance.
Long ago men fought and died for their faith;
but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, -
the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren
and their rights of conscience.
- Helen Keller

Property is intended to serve life,
and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect,
it has no personal being.
It is part of the earth man walks on.
It is not man.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am persuaded that the world has been tricked into adopting
some false and most pernicious notions about consistency -
and to such a degree that the average man has
turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely around
and is proud to be "consistent," unchanging, immovable, fossilized,
where it should be his humiliation.
- Mark Twain

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy,
because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.
- Jimmy Carter

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing
and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

America did not invent human rights.
In a very real sense, it is the other way around.
Human rights invented America.
- Jimmy Carter

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.
- Thomas Jefferson

There is no person in this room whose basic rights
are not involved in any successful defiance
to the carrying out of court orders.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Rights that do not flow from duty
well performed are not worth having.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent
and unalienable rights of man.
- Thomas Jefferson

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule,
where fifty-one percent of the people
may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen
who would protect the rights and privileges of free people
and who would preserve what is
good and fruitful in our national heritage.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson

I'm actually starting to like more and more people
who have convictions that are unpopular.
Now at what point does an unpopular conviction
interfere with your own human rights?
Forced female circumcision, for instance.
The Catholic Church's stance on contraception.
The list goes on. You know, God has some really weird kids,
and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.
- Bono

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival,
liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness
is a planet whose resources are devoted
to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
- Jimmy Carter

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth,
that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle,
that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail,
that will to be rightful must be reasonable;
that the minority possess their equal rights,
which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
- Thomas Jefferson

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.
- Thomas Jefferson

This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ...
Be vigilant about your rights.
Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small,
no matter how marginal, are violated,
your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History,
University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks
of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series

Those who believe they can do something
and those who believe they can't
are both right.
- Henry Ford

"Hurry up" ranks right up there with "you need to"
as a destroyer of our humanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Ordinary people seem not to realize
that those who really apply themselves
in the right way to philosophy
are directly and of their own accord
preparing themselves for dying and death.
- Socrates

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau

Whatever you do, you need courage.
Whatever course you decide upon,
there is always someone to tell you
that you are wrong.
There are always difficulties arising
that tempt you to believe your critics are right.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks-
if we agree with him.
- Mark Twain

One of the surest ways to cause
yourself great suffering
is to insist upon being right -
to demand that all others view life
exactly as you view it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The beginning of wisdom is to
call things by their right names.
- Chinese proverb

There is no "right", there is no "wrong" -
there are only points of view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.
What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
- Carl Jung

It is a fine thing to be honest,
but it is also very important to be right.
- Winston Churchill

Nothing can stop the man with the right
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson

If you think you can,
or you think you can't,
you're probably right.
- Henry Ford

I believe that everything happens for a reason.
People change so that you can learn to let go,
things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right,
you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself,
and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe

I am not interested in power for power's sake,
but I'm interested in power that is moral,
that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right,
than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual,
you have an obligation to be one.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

To have a right to do a thing
is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
- Gilbert (G. K.) Chesterton

We all have a social mask, right?
We put it on, we go out, put our
best foot forward, our best image.
But behind that social mask is a personal truth,
what we really, really believe
about who we are and what we're capable of.
- Phil McGraw

No individual has any right to come into the world
and go out of it without leaving something behind.
- George Washington Carver

It is not desirable to cultivate
a respect for the law,
so much as for the right.
- Henry David Thoreau

Courage is not always about action,
and it doesn't always involve danger,
but courage is always doing what is right.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

On life's journey, faith is nourishment,
virtuous deeds are a shelter,
wisdom is the light by day
and right mindfulness is the protection by night.
If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.
- The Buddha

We can always choose to perceive things differently.
You can focus on what's wrong in your life,
or you can focus on what's right.
- Marianne Williamson

Management is doing things right;
leadership is doing the right things.
- Peter F. Drucker

Sometimes it is better to lose
and do the right thing
than to win and do the wrong thing.
- Tony Blair

The past is no more and the future is not yet.
The only right person is one who lives moment to moment,
whose arrow is directed to the moment,
who is always here and now; wherever he is,
his whole consciousness, his whole being,
is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now.
- Osho

We must use time wisely and forever realize
that the time is always ripe to do right.
- Nelson Mandela

You only live once, and once is enough
if you play your cards right.
- the movie Interiors (1978)

That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind.
The time is always right to do the right thing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let reason trump tradition and the opinions of others,
but let your own sense of what is Right trump even reason.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
- Abraham Lincoln

It's not the situation that's causing your stress,
it's your thoughts,
and you can change that right here and now.
You can choose to be peaceful right here and now.
Peace is a choice,
and it has nothing to do with
what other people do or think.
- Gerald Jampolsky

Never let your sense of morals
get in the way of doing what's right.
- Isaac Asimov

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears,
when benevolence is lost right conduct appears,
when right conduct is lost, expedience appears.
Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth;
it is the beginning of disorder.
- Lao Tzu

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better
to displease the people by doing what you know is right,
than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
- William J. H. Boetcker

Let's have faith that right makes might;
and in that faith let us, to the end,
dare to do our duty as we understand it.
- Abraham Lincoln

The truth of the matter is that
you always know the right thing to do.
The hard part is doing it.
- Norman Schwarzkoff

Do what you feel in your heart to be right.
You'll be criticized anyway.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Confidence comes not from always being right
but from not fearing to be wrong.
- Peter T. Mcintyre

If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right,
you'll probably never do much of anything.
- Win Borden

First, wash all car. Then wax. Wax on...
Wax on, right hand. Wax off, left hand. Wax on, wax off.
Breathe in through nose, out the mouth. Wax on, wax off.
Don't forget to breathe, very important.
- Miyagi: character in the movie Karate Kid

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