Personal Freedoms Quotes

What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.

Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect—freedom of thought and freedom of action.

The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual.

The Liberty of Conscience and of the Press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States

I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties.

The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives - the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.

I am not putting a check on anyone. I just have to say that India's Constitution has given certain rights and freedom to people, but there are some limits, too.

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. The first of these a just philosophy will probably induce us universally to explode.

Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

Man holds these rights [life, liberty and property], not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective - as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross... these rights are man's protection against all other men.

Despite elections and the experience of post-Soviet personal freedoms by the Russian people, the fate of democracy in Russia is perhaps more ambiguous now than at any time since the collapse of the Communist system.

Since the ousting and capture of Saddam Hussein by U.S. forces, civil rights and personal freedoms have been restored in Iraq, as well as equal rights to all, not just to Saddam's entourage of terrorists.

What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance?

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.

A crucial question is how to balance surveillance with privacy and keeping Americans safe.

The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate.

It's not possible in a free country to completely control the border without us losing our freedoms and liberties.

The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both.

All rights are individual. We do not get our rights because we belong to a group. Whether it's homosexuals, women, minorities, it leads us astray. You don't get your rights belonging to your group. A group can't force themselves on anybody else. So there should be no affirmative action for any group.

The Bill of Rights

[J]ust because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right.

Communitarianism sows the seeds of conflicts between communities, and I don’t want my country to face conflicts between communities, I recognize only individuals. It is individual who have rights…

For two decades the state has been taking liberties, and these liberties were once ours.

If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, then American democracy is in trouble.