Anne Robert Jacques Turgot Quotes

It was the allurement of these fiscal advantages undoubtedly that prolonged the illusion and concealed the immense injury they did to industry and their infraction of natural right. This illusion had extended so far that some persons asserted that the right to work was a royal privilege which the king might sell, and that his subjects were bound to purchase from him. We hasten to correct this error and to repel the conclusion. God in giving to man wants and desires rendering labor necessary for their satisfaction, conferred the right to labor upon all men, and this property is the first, most sacred, and imprescriptible of all.... The King [Louis XVI] regards it as the first duty of his justice, and the worthiest act of benevolence, to free his subjects from any restriction upon this inalienable right of humanity.

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands, and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property.

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his.

A man’s right to his job transcends the right of private property.

The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.

I do not intend to take a position, which, if maintained, would abridge the freedom of discussion or restrain the liberty of the press. But I do contend that every principle of political justice, nay, every principle of humanity, demands that discussions shall not be persisted in, when it is manifest that their inevitable consequence is to render insecure … lives and property

As Justice gives every Man a Title to the product of his honest industry, and the fair Acquisitions of his Ancestors descended to him; so Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s plenty, as will keep him from extreme want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise.

… free labor insists on universal education

Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.

The right to work, I had assumed, was the most precious liberty that man possesses. Man has indeed as much right to work as he has to live, to be free, to own property.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right to property.

Emancipation - what is meant by it? Simply that the slaves shall cease to be held as property and shall henceforth be held and treated as human beings. Simply, that we should take our feet from off their necks.

Freedom and Justice are twin sisters.

If it be not a sin, an open, flagrant violation of all the rules of justice and humanity, to hold these slaves in bondage, it is indeed folly to put ourselves to any trouble and expense in order to free them.

My grand affair appears settled, for America is certain of her independence, humanity has gained her cause, and liberty will never be without a place of refuge.

The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Some values must be universal, like human rights and the equal worth of every human being.

Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.

Human rights is a universal standard. It is a component of every religion and every civilization.

Establish democracy ... based on human rights as superior to property rights.

Moral principles of liberty that endow a person with the right to claim and acquire property at the same time oblige that person to respect every other person’s equal right to do the same.

What vested rights so high or so sacred as a man’s right to himself, to his wife and children, to his liberty, and to the fruits of his own industry? Did not our fathers declare that those rights were inalienable?

Personal liberty and personal rights are placed in the keeping of the nation, that the right to life, liberty, and property shall be guarantied to the citizen in reality ... We must make American citizenship the shield that protects every citizen, on every foot of our soil.