Lucille Roybal-Allard Quotes

Americans need to understand the significance of having their civil liberties dismantled. It doesn't just affect terrorists and foreigners, it affects us all.

We give up our liberties too casually [in emergencies and crises]

It doesn’t keep us safe and it doesn’t keep us free if we give up our liberties to the government.

Those who would give up their civil liberties for security deserve neither.

The new laws passed by Congress in the name of fighting terrorism pose a greater danger to the civil liberties of American citizens than to the operations of terrorists. Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die.

I do think that our freedoms are at risk.

We must protect the very things that make America so special - most certainly including our civil liberties. But we cannot do so without strong national security and a thoughtful and informed discourse.

The last thing the Department of Homeland Security is about is infringing on anybody's constitutionally protected rights.

Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.

If, in the name of combating terrorism, we so restrict our own freedom, have we not thereby lost part of the very battle we seek to win?

Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts.

How far are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of essential liberties?

If we give up all our privacy rights, have we become any safer?

Britain's anti-terror laws are an affront to democracy.

I want to collect more records from terrorists, but less records from innocent Americans. The Fourth Amendment was what we fought the Revolution over! John Adams said it was the spark that led to our war for independence, and I'm proud of standing for the Bill of Rights, and I will continue to stand for the Bill of Rights.

I am ready to debate how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty.

We have less civil liberties than we had on 9/ 1 1 in some significant ways. But we are also, I believe, less safe as a result in many instances of the sacrifice in human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law that (the Bush) administration has adopted.

We can't simply scare people into giving up their rights, on the basis, oh, this protects us from terrorism.

How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties.

While the debate on the Patriot Act is far from over, it is important that all Americans continue in this dialogue and work together to ensure greater security for our nation.

We have got to protect privacy rights. We have got to protect our God-given, constitutionally protected civil liberties, and we are not doing that in the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security, as well as the TSA, is a great culprit in being a Gestapo-type organization.

We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.

It's never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to 'control protestors' - especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent.

We must erase bin Laden's ugly legacy, not extend it: by ending the Patriot Act's erosion of our civil liberties, we can protect the freedoms that make America worth fighting for.