Rudolph Rocker Quotes

All the political rights and liberties which people enjoy today, they do not owe to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace.

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.

I want every American to stand up for his rights, even if he has to sit down for them.

Democratic rights develop when the ruled demand them and have the means to prevail.

You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway. You can’t stop us, neither

We the people tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us.

The greater the share the people have in government, the less liberty, civil or religious, does a nation enjoy.

I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.

Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.

When the people stand up, imperialism trembles.

The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights.

All over this world people are standing up for freedom.

The democratic principle, enunciated in the words of the Declaration of Independence, declared that government was secondary, that the people who established it were primary. Thus, the future of democracy depended on the people, and their growing consciousness of what was the decent way to relate to their fellow human beings all over the world.

There is but one element of government, and that is THE PEOPLE. From this element spring all governments. "For a nation to be free, it is only necessary that she wills it." For a nation to be slave, it is only necessary that she wills it.

Democracy is "government of, by and for the people".

Civil liberties are a great heritage for Americans. They are not rights that the government gives to the people, they are the rights that the people carved out for themselves when they created the government.

I honestly do not know if civil disobedience has any effect on the government. I can promise you it has a great effect on the person who chooses to do it.

If the government fails to listen to your demands, then you will decide what is best for you.

When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.

The right and the physical power of the people to resist injustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.