Charles B. Rangel Quotes

Our nation was founded on the principals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I love the Constitution. But it's still a document, meant to protect human beings and ensure their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Today, we stand as a united country and are much closer to the ideals set forth in our Constitution that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We have a long heritage of freedom that defines America. We believe there is a Creator who blessed us with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights.

What makes America great was a government that was founded to be limited to doing one thing. I really believe the whole purpose of America, the aspirational value - why everybody who wants to come to this country wants to come here - was because we respected the dignity of every living person.

America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

People have lost what this nation was built on. I think our core values have been set aside... I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

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

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?

We made freedom a birthright.

The Declaration of Independence... is the declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man

I have said that in their right to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior races are our equals.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.

We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal …

We hold these truths to be self-evident …

I believe that, as Americans, our freedoms come from God and not government, and include the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is part of our constitutional rights and it belongs to everybody.

But America was founded on the principle that every person has God-given rights. That power belongs to the people. That government exists to protect our rights and serve our interests. That we shouldn't be trapped in the circumstances of our birth. That we should be free to go as far as our talents and work can take us.

America is truly special because it's founded on an idea. It's the ideological and philosophical equivalent of a formless God, in other words, you know? It's, again, the only great country in the world that it is formed out of words.

For the freedoms our founding fathers not only dreamed about, but made into reality. It is that same pursuit of freedom today that is helping to make our world a safer place.

Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization.

The Declaration calls us to recognize the inherent equality of all people. And when it becomes unmistakably evident that a government is denying the governed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it's the right of people to establish a new government to secure these unalienable rights.

This is not a time to back away from the principles that this country was founded on.