Nelson Mandela Quotes

Our rights are interconnected and inseparable. When freedom of expression is threatened, the rights to freedom of association and assembly, of thought, conscience and religion, are also compromised.

Once people who have been deprived of basic freedom taste a little of it, they want all of it.

One cannot have a trade union or a democratic election without freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby people choose and remove their rulers, there is no method of securing human rights against the state. No democracy without human rights, no human rights without democracy, and no trade union rights without either. That is our belief; that is our creed.

Macau is democratic and free enough.. it's prosperous enough. Why do people need to do this?.

In any nation in which people's rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.

Since the uprisings in the Middle East many scholars have come out saying that freedom comes first before the Shariah. There is also something important that we must keep in mind in our understanding the Shariah, and that is the room for what is permissible should be as wide as possible. So we should leave it open to let people be creative.

Struggle for freedom. Where people are denied the right of choice, recourse to such struggle is the only means of achieving their liberties.

Without democracy freedom is a chimera

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Establish democracy ... based on human rights as superior to property rights.

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

Perhaps at no time in our history had there been such a wholesale violation of civil liberties.

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

We completely uphold the right of freedom of assembly. But there is always that important balance between security and freedom of expression in countries undergoing circumstances like ours.

Within the United States, we have put great emphasis upon political freedoms. Because it has been our experience that these freedoms can lead to others.

We're losing our freedom of speech. We are losing freedom of religion. We are losing freedom of the press.

Freedom of expression is very important.

Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty.

Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible.

Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.

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

The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.

We can't impose freedom, but we can eliminate roadblocks to freedom, and to allow free societies to develop.

Liberty... is there only when there is no abuse of power.