Tracy Chapman Quotes

We all want security …. But we don’t need to simplify the debate to such an extent that we simply say we have to give up our liberties.

I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights.

Government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.

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.

How far are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of essential liberties?

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

The issue of wiretapping raises the issue of the balance between human liberty and the requirements of national security. I would say that the weight should be on the side of human liberty and that if human liberty is ever to be infringed, the demonstration on the national security side must be overwhelming.

Security is no replacement for liberty.

Benjamin Franklin once said, 'A people who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.' I think we can have both. We can keep our liberties. We can have our security.

When we think in the context of the last decade's infringements upon personal liberty and the last year's revelations, it's not about surveillance. It's about liberty.

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

In the area of national security, I urge the swift passage of an anti-terrorism law that will protect rather than subvert, enhance rather than weaken, the rights and liberties that terrorism precisely threatens with extinction.

Privacy isn't negotiable. It's the right of every American.

The right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the most valued by civilized men.

All persons have the right to privacy and to intimacy.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.

Where States impose unlawful censorship through filtering and other technologies, the use of encryption and anonymity may empower individuals to circumvent barriers and access information and ideas without the intrusion of authorities. Journalists, researchers, lawyers and civil society rely on encryption and anonymity to shield themselves (and their sources, clients and partners) from surveillance and harassment. The ability to search the web, develop ideas and communicate securely may be the only way in which many can explore basic aspects of identity, such as one’s gender, religion, ethnicity, national origin or sexuality.

Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o'clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo.

Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy.

The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

And a democracy can't exist without free speech and the right to assemble. And that's what Americans tend to forget. And they're born into a culture where they take all of their freedoms for granted.

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment.

We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not - nor will we ever - monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources.