Barack Obama Quotes

We have less civil liberties than we had on 9/ 1 1 in some significant ways. But we are also, I believe, less safe as a result in many instances of the sacrifice in human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law that (the Bush) administration has adopted.

The new laws passed by Congress in the name of fighting terrorism pose a greater danger to the civil liberties of American citizens than to the operations of terrorists. Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die.

Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights.

Many think it is not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences laws or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principals, to accommodate it.

I am not yet ready to agree that America is so possessed with evil that we must level all constitutional barriers to give our civil authorities the tools to catch criminals.

The best thing we did with the Patriot Act was to sunset it. Almost 800 foreign nationals, immigrants, mostly Arab-Americans or people who looked like Arab-Americans, were arrested, put in jail, held without charges, no notification for their families and no right to counsel. That's un-American and I'll fight to end that. If we fight the terrorists who attacked us because of our liberties by compromising our liberties, shame on us.

We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night. So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time.

I mean, we do believe in due process in America. I thought we did.

September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

The callous use of general warrants and the disregard for the Bill of Rights must end. Forcing us to choose between our rights and our safety is a false choice and we are better than that as a nation and as a people.

The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.

Human rights must be protected by the rule of law, and there can never be occasions where human rights can be neglected or ignored or the rule of law set aside.

Human rights and rule of law are inseparably connected.

If we quickly cast aside our constitutional form of government, then the enemy will not be the terrorists, it will be us.

If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law – if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states – then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies – even those who do not subscribe to our views – as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

I think the worst thing in the world is to have the courts decide who to target in the war on terrorism. And courts are not military commanders.

Your rights matter, because you never know when you're going to need them.

Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . . of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness.

This is a time when the protections of Americans' liberties are directly at risk, as are the checks and balances that have served to constrain abuses of power for more than 200 years. The Supreme Court is relied upon by all of to us protect our fundamental rights.

Who gets to decide who's an enemy combatant and who's an American citizen? Are we really so frightened and so easily frightened that we would give up a thousand-year history?

We are a nation called to defend freedom - a tradition that is not a grant of any government or document, but is an endowment from God.

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.