Rights Theory Quotes

When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them.

I recognize no rights but human rights.

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. The first of these a just philosophy will probably induce us universally to explode.

There is no such thing as "natural rights;" there are only adjustments of conflicting claims.

I wonder if it's conservative or liberal [ inalienable rights idea], because when we think of liberal thought, when we think about the relation to liberty, we're talking about traditional conservatism - as opposed to today's conservatism, which no longer represents those views.

The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.

Every man has a right by nature to possess property as his own.

Some other natural rights... have not yet entered into any declaration of rights.

Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights"? is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights"? is a contradiction in terms.

Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have the same rights.

If an animal has any rights at all, it's got the right not to be eaten.

The theory of rights enables us to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong and lasting accord between all the elements which compose the nation.

Sometimes it leads me even to hesitate whether I am strictly correct in my idea that all men are born to equal rights, for their conduct seems to me to contravene the doctrine.

Rights are not self-evident. They're not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.

The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.

As Enlightenment philosophers and scholars consciously adopted the methods of science to establish such abstract concepts as rights, liberty, and justice, successive generations have become schooled in thinking of these abstractions as applied to others in matrices-like mental rotations.

Either one is factually equal, and consequently morally equal as well; on the other hand, if one is morally equal, there is no reason why one should contest factual equality of rights or simply refuse to grant them.

No right can come by conquest, unless there were a right of making that conquest.

A human being has no natural rights of any nature.

I had faith in the concept and the theory that all Americans are endowed with the right to a fair trial and I would be fairly judged and fairly tried.

Principle I: Legal rights are presumptive rights.

What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.

Logic cannot support the premise that health care is a right. Health care is a service that is administered by another human being with the requisite skills and knowledge. To claim that healthcare as a "right" is to claim a right to the services of the health-care provider. In effect, this means you are claiming a "right" to a portion of that person's life – both a portion of the time already spent developing his skills, and a portion of the time spent practicing those skills on you.