Aldous Huxley Quotes

The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.

When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them.

A human being has no natural rights of any nature.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond the Constitution.

Some other natural rights... have not yet entered into any declaration of rights.

The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic ….

Rights are either God-given or evolve out of the democratic process. Most rights are based on the ability of people to agree on a social contract, the ability to make and keep agreements.

Rights are considered to have their source not in nature, but in law.

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. The first of these a just philosophy will probably induce us universally to explode.

Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.

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.

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

Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.

The three basic material rights -- continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness.

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system.

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

Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter endowed with will...Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity.

Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have the same rights.

I wonder if it's conservative or liberal [ inalienable rights idea], because when we think of liberal thought, when we think about the relation to liberty, we're talking about traditional conservatism - as opposed to today's conservatism, which no longer represents those views.

The rights of man as the foundation of just Government had been long understood but the superstructures projected had been sadly defective

The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.

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.

Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.