In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.
Because our right to worship freely and safely, that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina, and that was denied Jews in Kansas City, and that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights too. Our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from movie goers in Aurora and Lafayette.
Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
We still have sanctions on Iran for its violations of human rights, for its support of terrorism and for its ballistic missile program. And we will continue to enforce these sanctions vigorously. Iran's recent missile test, for example, was a violation of its international obligations.
In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.
Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framedon the ratio of owners and of owning.
The Declaration of Independence has been called, with some justice, the most revolutionary document in human history, in that it placed the individual person first in the political scheme of things and made the legitimacy of governments and ruling classes contingent on their success at preserving individual rights.
The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history.
When people are oppressed, and human rights are denied - particularly along sectarian lines or ethnic lines - when dissent is silenced, it feeds violent extremism, it creates an environment that is ripe for terrorists to exploit. When peaceful, democratic change is impossible, it feeds into the terrorist propaganda that violence is the only answer available.
The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act - and if necessary, to suffer and die - for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.
You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.