Exercise of Rights Quotes

The effect of liberty is to let individuals ... do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints.

People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.

[J]ust because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right.

The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter; as if the exercise of its rights, by either the executive or judiciary, were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity.

Voting is great, but it's not an accomplishment. It's a responsibility.

Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action.

One can't be free without action.

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.