Fundamental Rights Quotes

The Court has long held that the Constitution protects certain fundamental rights that are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution's text, while at the same time emphasizing that courts must proceed with great caution in recognizing such rights.

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own.... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

The Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.

If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought.

Ignorant and illiterate people cannot understand democracy. They are prey to religious extremists.

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.

The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental rights of private property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.

The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.

Our system, for readily apparent reasons, is far superior to those in nations, mostly totalitarian, which presume an arrested person is guilty and place the burden on the accused to prove his innocence.

I believe in the Constitution - and I believe in common sense.

I believe the Constitution matters: that it's not just a few pieces of paper.

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.

Indian democracy has often been likened to the stately progress of the elephant - ponderous in its gait and reluctant to change course, but not easily swayed from its new path when it does.

The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

We are exercising our constitutional right to be fresh.

Our democracy has survived for so many years in India. We should at least give credit to the Congress for that.

To establish republican government, it is necessary to effect a constitution in which the will of the nation shall have an organized control over the actions of its government, and its citizens a regular protection against its oppressions

Voting rights are constitutional rights.

If we do not adhere firmly to the constitution, our governments will not last long and will change frequently.

Free speech, free press, free religion, the right of free assembly, yes, the right of petition—well, they are still radical ideas.

The constitution shall be made, or we will cease to be

I was a human rights lawyer for 20 years, I believed those values of dignity, equality and non-discrimination were a given. believed the only question in my lifetime would be - how much further do we extend those values? I did not think in my lifetime we'd actually be having an argument about those values.

The Constitution nowhere mentions a specific right of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life, but the ‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment covers more than those freedoms explicitly named in the Bill of Rights

This commonwealth does upon the most deliberate reconsideration declare, that the said alien and sedition laws, are in their opinion, palpable violations of the said constitution