Ezra Taft Benson Quotes

All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate.

Our rights come from nature and God, not government.

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?

The most general rights, which belong to all mankind, may be said to be the right to life, to liberty and to property.

Generous souls always interest themselves in the fate of a people who strive to recover the rights to which the Creator and Nature have entitled them, and one must indeed be wedded to error and passion not to harbor this noble sentiment

No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature.

All men are free in a state of nature.

In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.

At first man was enslaved by the gods, but he broke their chains… Then he was enslaved by the kings, but he broke their chains… He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race, but he broke their chains... He declared to all his brothers that man has rights that neither god or king nor other men can take away from him no matter what their number. For his is the right of man. And there is no right on earth above this right

No doubt that a great deal of nonsense has been written about the “unalienable rights of individuals.”

One of the greatest disasters that happened to modern civilization was for democracy to inscribe "liberty" on its banners instead of "justice." Because "liberty" was considered the ideal it was not long until some men interpreted it as meaning "freedom from justice"; then when religion and decent government attempted to bring them back to justice, organized into "freedom groups" they protested that their constitutional and natural rights were being violated.

America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the unalienable right for life. This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government because it does not come from government, it comes from the creator of life.

The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.

The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.

Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.

Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, in matters spiritual and temporal is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the laws of nations and all well-grounded and municipal laws, which must have their foundation in the former.

I believe that God has endowed men with certain inalienable rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and that no legislature and no majority, however great, may morally limit or destroy these; that the sole function of government is to protect life, liberty, and property, and anything more than this is usurpation and oppression.

All men are, or ought to be free, possessing unalienable rights, and the high and noble qualifications of the laws of nature and of self-preservation, to think, and act, and say as they please, while they maintain a due respect to the rights and privileges of all other creatures, infringing upon none.

Self government is our right, a thing born to us at birth a thing no more to be doled out to us by another people then the right to life itself then the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers or to love our kind.

Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own.

A right , in the abstract, is a fact ; it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred; it is. Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never.

Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.

If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights,then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.

Here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.