The clergy, by getting themselves established by law, & ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil & religious rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Jeremiah Moor (18 Aug 1800)
(Source)
Quotations about:
civil rights
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Bad men, like good men, are entitled to be tried and sentenced in accordance with law, and when it is shown to us that a person is serving an illegal sentence our obligation is to direct that proper steps be taken to correct the wrong done, without regard to the character of a particular defendant or to the possible effect on others who might also want to challenge the legality of their sentences as they have the right to do “at any time” under Rule 35. If it has any relevance at all, the fact that there may be other prisoners in this country’s jails serving illegal sentences would seem to me to make it all the more imperative that we grant appropriate relief in this case rather than search for some obviously dubious excuse to deny this petitioner’s claim.
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 309-310 (1961) [dissent]
(Source)
It is my belief that there are “absolutes” in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what the words meant and meant their prohibitions to be “absolutes.”
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
James Madison Lecture, NYU School of Law (1960-02-17)
(Source)
The inaugural Madison lecture. Reprinted as "The Bill of Rights," NYU Law Review, Vol. 35 (1960-04).
Certainly the First Amendment’s language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” I read “no law … abridging” to mean no law abridging.
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 157 (1959) [concurring]
(Source)
Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are nonconforming victims of prejudice and public excitement. Due process of law, preserved for all by our Constitution, commands that no such practice as that disclosed by this record shall send any accused to his death. No higher duty, no more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution — of whatever race, creed or persuasion.
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227, 241 (1940) [majority opinion]
(Source)
Overturning a state murder conviction obtained through a coerced confession.
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” (18 Jun 1779; enacted 16 Jan 1786)
(Source)
Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
“The New Nationalism,” speech, Osawatomie, Kansas (31 Aug 1910)
Civil liberties had their origin and must find their ultimate guaranty in the faith of the people. If that faith should be lost, five or nine men in Washington could not long supply its want.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
Douglas v. Jeannette 319 U.S. 157, 181 (1943) [concurring]
(Source)
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
(Attributed)
Cited in some cases as the closing argument while defending the British Soldiers accused of killing 5 colonists in the "Boston Massacre" (usually given as "Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials" (Dec 1770)), but I did not find it in accounts of that defense.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to the Danbury Baptists (1 Jan 1802)
(Source)
Addressed to "messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut."
Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who can not find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to James Madison (28 Oct 1785)
(Source)
A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A manipulated population can be misused in serving any military adventure whatever. Unreliability in some areas arouses justifiable fear of unreliability in everything. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
“An Anatomy of Reticence [Anatomie jedné zdrženlivosti],” sec. 9, no. 5 (1985-04) [tr. Kohák (1986)]
(Source)
First reprinted in Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture #5 (1986). Reprinted here in Living in Truth: twenty-two essays published on the occasion of the award of the Erasmus Prize to Václav Havel, Part 1, ch. 6 (1986).
It seems to me that the distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“What I Believe,” Forum and Century (Oct 1930)
(Source)
This phrase is not found in the parallel "The World As I See It [Mein Weltbild]" the next year.
We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Letter to William Allan Neilson (1940-01-09)
(Source)
Neilson was the co-chair of the Sponsor Committee, Fourth Annual Conference of the American Committee for Protection of Foreign-Born. It was read to the conference on 1 March 1940, and entered into the Congressional Record (along with other letters received) on 11 March.
About two years later, 19 February 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the evacuation of all persons (which largely meant Japanese-Americans) deemed a national security threat from the West Coast to internment centers further inland.
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
William Allen White (1868-1944) American writer and journalist
“A Free Press in a Machine Age,” speech, U. of Pennsylvania (2 May 1938)
For as the problem of civil rights has grown in urgency it has also grown in complexity. We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1964-12-10), National Urban League, New York
(Source)
Liberty then I would say that, in the whole plenitude of it’s extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the 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 right of an individual.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (4 Apr 1819)
(Source)
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.
Anthony Kennedy (b. 1936) US Supreme Court Justice
International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672 (26 Jun 1992) [concurring[
(Source)
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
John Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902) British historian
“The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” Speech, Bridgenorth Institute (28 Feb 1877)
