Civic Rights Quotes

The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government.

It must not be forgotten that only a local government which recognizes and maintains inviolate the rights of all is a true self-government.

The right to vote is the easiest of all rights to grant.

The foundation of English liberty and of all free government is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council.

How shall those who practice election frauds recover that respect for the sanctity of the ballot which is the first condition and obligation of good citizenship? The man who has come to regard the ballot box as a juggler's hat has renounced his allegiance.

To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens...this brings us to the point at which are to commence the higher branches of education . . . . To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order.

The sovereignty of the people is inalienable.

We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements.

The people have every right to meet in a peaceful manner and express and ventilate their grievance and criticize the policy and actions of any civilized Government.

I believe in that connection between freedom and the city.

Everybody enjoys the freedom he deserves, which is measured by the stature and dignity of his person or by his function, and not by the abstract and elementary fact of merely being a 'human being' or a 'citizen'.

There is more to the right to vote than the right to mark a piece of paper and drop it in a box or the right to pull a lever in a voting booth .... It also includes the right to have the vote counted at full value without dilution or discount.

Existing legal discriminations on account of color are not based on character or conduct, and have no relation to moral worth and fitness for civic usefulness, but are rather relics of prejudice which had its origin in slavery. I recommend their total repeal.

I am not sure that we would always want 16-year-olds to do all the things they can do. I am afraid that I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman on the voting age. I think that it should remain as it is.

Heroes did not make our liberties; they but reflected and illustrated them.

Voting is a civic sacrament.

Citizenship is a lifetime job.

To speak his thoughts is every freeman's right, in peace and war, in council and in fight.

I demand ... the franchise for all loyal citizens

That has to come to an end and end now. No citizen is a second-class citizen in the city of Chicago. If my children are treated one way, every child is treated the same way.

Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.

Naturally I knew it was ridiculous to deprive half the people of the country of any voice in the laws they had to live under, merely on account of a trifling difference in sex, but I did not think anything I could do about it was likely to be helpful.

Take it from me - every vote counts. In our Democracy, every vote has power. And never forget - that power is yours. Don't let anyone take it away or talk you into throwing it away. And let's make sure that this time every vote is counted.

Freedom of economic determination is inseparably linked up with civic rights and with the possibility of influencing and determining the social and political life of the commonwealth.

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.