Privileges Quotes

Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, "equality" is a disaster.

About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman's education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.

Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.

In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.

Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.

The right to speak freely concerning functions of the Federal Government is a privilege of immunity of every citizen of the United States which, even before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, a State was powerless to curtail.

One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them.

Our naturalization laws should be so amended as to make the inquiry into the character and good disposition of persons applying for citizenship more careful and searching … We accept the man as a citizen without any knowledge of his fitness, and he assumes the duties of citizenship without any knowledge as to what they are. The privileges of American citizenship are so great and its duties so grave that we may well insist upon a good knowledge of every person applying for citizenship and a good knowledge by him of our institutions. We should not cease to be hospitable to immigration, but we should cease to be careless as to the character of it. There are men of all races, even the best, whose coming is necessarily a burden upon our public revenues or a threat to social order. These should be identified and excluded.

Be Patriarch, with good fortune, and be assured of our friendship, keeping all of the privileges of the Patriarchs before you enjoyed.

We need never have white slaves in the South, because we have black ones. Our citizens, like those of Rome and Athens, are a privileged class. We should train and educate them to deserve the privileges and to perform the duties which society confers on them. Instead, by a low demagoguism depressing their self-respect by discourses on the equality of man, we had better excite their pride by reminding them that they do not fulfill the menial offices which white men do in other countries.

Every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add… artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

A government job is an occasion for public service, not special privilege. The undivided loyalty to the public interest required of the governorship makes it inappropriate to keep the profusion of gifts that arrive every day at this office.

I didn't believe one man should have so much services and another man should have none.

The power to regulate commerce does not look to the principle by which boats were moved. That power was left to individual discretion. The act demonstrates the opinion of Congress that steamboats may be enrolled and licensed in common with vessels using sails. They are, of course, entitled to the same privileges and can no more be restrained from navigating waters and entering ports, which are free to such vessels, than if they were wafted on their voyage by the winds instead of being propelled by the agency of fire. The one element may be as legitimately used as the other, for every commercial purpose authorized by the laws of the river, and the act of a State inhibiting the use of either to any vessel, having a license under the act of Congress, comes, we think, in direct collision with that act. The acts of the Legislature of the State of New York, granting to Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton the exclusive navigation of all the waters within the jurisdiction of that State, with boats moved by fire or steam, for a term of years, are repugnant to that clause of the constitution of the United States, which authorizes Congress to regulate commerce, so far as the said acts prohibit vessels licensed, according to the laws of the United States, for carrying on the coasting trade, from navigating the said waters by means of fire or steam.

Whatever is a privilege rather than a right, may be made dependent upon citizenship.

What rights don't they have?

Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

Mr President: When it rains it pours but most Americans hold their own umbrellas.

We have to remember that the United States has certain principles, certain values that bind us all together, that make us all American. And if we allow those values, those rights to be rescinded for one group of individuals, then we are essentially opening the door to having all of our rights, all of our privileges rescinded.

Like all women, my path to womanhood is unique. No two paths are the same. Each of us travel with different privileges, challenges, and perspectives - some limiting, others illuminating.

Occupancy of the Front Bench imposes penalties as well as privileges. Its members have to surrender some of the freedom which the back benches afford, and they have to consider much more closely whether what they do and say may help or compromise the position of the Party.. These obligations are so trying at times that men … do not care to assume them, preferring the greater freedom of the back benches. I would not personally press anyone to change back bench freedom for Front Bench reticence and circumspection, but I should like you to consider whether or not you cared to do so. If you thought that you could stand the yoke (and I have not found it too difficult) it would be a pleasure to me to tell the members of the Party that I proposed to ask you to join those who sit on the Front Bench.

We have a great nation to help govern. We who are citizens of this great republic are favored children, yet we are all the time complaining; but that is one of the inalienable privileges of an American to complain about his neighbor and government-always crying for a change. But, with all of its faults, this is the best government for man on the face of the earth

There are a lot of people in Beverly Hills who come from the Middle East, who are very much a part of the Beverly Hills fabric, and their kids grew up with the privileges of Beverly Hills. And yet they still have to deal with a lot of the prejudice against them for being foreign-born.

The Americans, in the Spanish system now in place, perhaps more so than ever before, have no other place in society than that of simple consumers; even in this they are burdened with shocking restrictions, such as a ban on the cultivation of European fruit, with control of these products monopolised by the king, a prohibition on factories which not even the peninsula possesses, exclusive commercial privileges even over basic needs, and customs bans between American provinces so that they cannot trade, understand each other or negotiate