Muhammad Ali Quotes

Any delay in action protecting constitutional rights is justice denied.

The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic ….

According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I [the Lord] have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles.

The Supreme Court is the last refuge in America for our rights and liberties.

[There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens.

We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere life-homage to truth and nonviolence.

Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties.

It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.

We have not enjoyed unmolested those rights which the constitution of the U.S.A. and our Charters grant.

There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.

She [Justice sandra Day O'Connor] wrote - and this is one we should all remember - she wrote that even war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens. She held that even this president is not above the law.

Historically, the court has been the forum to which individuals can turn when they believed their constitutional rights were violated. This has been especially noteworthy in the arena of civil rights.

If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights.

[Louis Brandeis] believes in natural rights of speech and liberty and the right to pursue happiness.

And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.

It is commonly believed that the rights of the American people come from the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What makes America great is peaceful protests and exercising your constitutional rights.

[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

I guess the language that Justice Ginsburg used at the closing of the VMI (United States v. Virginia Military Institute) case is an important thing; it resonates with me: 'A prime part of the history of our Constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded.'

America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice.

If the Constitution can be used against one, it can be used against all.

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

Without authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them.

She [Justice sandra Day O'Connor] rejected the [George] Bush administration's claim that it could indefinitely detain a United States citizen. She upheld the fundamental principle of judicial review over the exercise of government power.