The rights of persons and the rights of property are the objects for the protection of which Government was instituted.

The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.

We don't need a weakened government but a strong government that would take responsibility for the rights of the individual and care for the society as a whole.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people and is regulated by their will as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property liberty of conscience and of the press it will be worth defending.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

Potentially a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

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.

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.

Good breeding differs if at all from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.

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.

We are persuaded that good Christians will always be good citizens and that where righteousness prevails among individuals the Nation will be great and happy. Thus while just government protects all in their religious rights true religion affords to government it's surest support.

Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God not from government.

In my country of South Africa we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings children of the same God by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are like God's infinite mercy a last resort.

Cambodia possesses now the rights to look far into the future and everything for making a future construction is waiting for the Cambodian own efforts.

Rather than waiting for future trials to determine rules that will impact every citizen Congress should step in and write a law that takes every American's rights into consideration.

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.

When I went off to the army when I was 17 years old I believed in America and the rights of freedom. But today I believe my government is lying to the American people and that my president George Bush is a criminal.

It is not natural or inevitable that half the world goes hungry that the freedom of markets trumps protection of the planet or that citizens' rights come second to those of corporations.

Liberty freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words but human rights is very specific.

What does it mean to be an American? While each of us may have our own specific answer to that question we likely can agree on the basic principles of America: freedom equal opportunity and rights accompanied by responsibilities.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation the expansion of women's rights or now gay rights I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.