Thomas Clarkson Quotes

Our rights come from God - not man, not a monarch, not a government.

If God gives you rights, no man and no government can take them away from you.

Government itself is founded upon the great doctrine of the consent of the governed, and has its cornerstone in the memorable principle that men are endowed with inalienable rights.

Rights come from God, not from government.

But today, government is taking those rights from us, pretending that it gives us our rights. Indeed, those rights come from God, and it was recognized throughout our history as such.

Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.

It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals.

A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.

Unalienable rights are essential limitations to all governments.

Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.

We believe, as our founders did, that 'the pursuit of happiness' depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government.

The very idea of law originates in men's natural rights. There is no other standard, than natural rights, by which civil law can be measured. Law has always been the name of that rule or principle of justice, which protects those rights. Thus we speak of natural law.

To no human charter am I indebted for my rights.

This country was founded upon the principle that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - those rights are what make America great, and they belong to each and every one of us.

All men are by nature born equally free and independent.

There is only one kind of freedom and that's individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

The whole of the Bill is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

We believe that government in Britain is there to protect people from terrorism and from the worst criminality, but never at the expense of our civil liberties and the basic tenets of our legal system.

The common Notions of Liberty are not from School Divines, but from Nature.

Liberty is not the unique right of Americans or even Westerners, but is mankind's right.

You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right - constitutional right.

But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other.

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.