Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Ronald Reagan
When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties. Marquis de LaFayette
Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something you had a right to. George Orwell
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. George Orwell
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt. George Orwell
The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and false reasonings, is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator, to the whole human race; and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society. Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law. Lyndon Baines Johnson, speech to Congress 27th November 1963
For two decades the state has been taking liberties, and these liberties were once ours. E P Thompson
Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government. Henry Kissinger
There was an immediate assumption on the part of the administration that there had to be a surrender of certain of our rights. John Conyers, Congress Michigan
Despite being a US citizen Jose Padilla has been held indefinitely in a Naval brig in North Carolina. He has never been charged. And hasn’t seen a lawyer. CNN News
[Jose] Padilla alleged that he was subjected to prolonged isolation; deprivation of light; exposure to prolonged periods of light and darkness, including being ‘periodically subjected to absolute light or darkness for periods in excess of twenty-four hours’; extreme variations in temperature; sleep adjustment; threats of severe physical abuse; death threats; administration of psychotropic drugs; shackling and manacling for hours at a time; use of ‘stress’ positions; noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose; loud noises; withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet, or blanket; forced grooming; suspensions of showers; removal of religious items; constant surveillance; incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period; interference with religious observance; and denial of medical care for ‘serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions’. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 2012
There is no civil right. Not even the precious right of citizenship that this administration will not abuse to secure ever greater control over American life. Professor Jack Balkin, Yale University
In our day certain economic fruits have become accepted as self-evident. A second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station or race or creed. Among these are the right to a useful and remunerated job. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. F D Roosevelt, televised annex to State of the Union address
If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. F D Roosevelt
While it is correct to insist that rights should be balanced by obligations, there is a dangerous tendency for obligations – to search for work, to save for pensions – to be imposed upon the poor, while rights – to enjoy low marginal rates of tax, to opt out into privileged private education – are voluntarily exercised by the rich. Will Hutton, The State to Come
I’ll never forget that night. I jumped out of bed, got in my car, rushed over the west side of Chicago right at the height of the riot. I get out of the car and here is this coloured woman picks up this brick and throws it through the Pawn Shop window. And she grabbed three pistols. And I rushed up her and said, ‘Cool it, baby. Don’t act like this. You’re going to break up the whole civil rights movement.’ She said, ‘Damn the civil rights movement. I just caught my husband with another woman and I’m going to kill him.’ Dick Gregory
Of all the leaders of the civil rights movement, one in particular has always inspired me. A deeply religious cotton picker from the Mississippi Delta – Fannie Lou Hamer. This is Fannie Lou with the amazing voice at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City in 1964. She’s leading the protests on the boardwalk outside the Convention Centre ... Fanny Lou would be shot at, imprisoned, beaten up but nothing would stop her. The American Future: A History by Simon Schama, BBC 2008
Throughout the ‘60s the bravery, eloquence and passion of the Civil Rights Campaign made other liberation movements in America wake up. Simon Schama’s History of Now II, BBC 2022
It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country when I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi? ... I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of setting the Negro free in Mississippi. Fannie Lou Hamer, cited Hay Mills 'This Little Light of Mine'
With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, ’cause that’s what really happens. ibid.
Well I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I started doing some research on other civil liberties violations and here are just a few examples of what I found: December 2002 Ohio – high-school student interrogated by the secret service. His crime? Wearing this T-shirt; September 1 2001 Georgia – Man interrogated by the secret service. His crime? Having anti-Bush bumper stickers on his truck; November 2 2002 Dallas Texas – 12 students detained, interrogated and threatened with arrest by the secret service for ‘threatening the life of the president’. Their crime? Chanting an anti-war slogan during Bush’s speech; March 3 2003 Albany New York – Attorney arrested for trespassing at a local mall. His crime? Wearing an anti-war T-shirt which he had purchased at the mall. Liberty Bound, 2004
To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty my message is this: your tactics only aide terrorists. John Ashcroft
We most certainly do not and will not give protection to civil right workers. J Edgar Hoover
In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as ‘right-to-work’. It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works’. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining ... We demand this fraud be stopped. Martin Luther King
In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies ... but the silence of our friends. Martin Luther King
I will die standing up for the freedom of my people. Martin Luther King
The civil rights programs were a formulaic response to a real need, and not by any means one that has proved as successful as an alternative means might have been. William Buckley v Christopher Hitchens, debate 2008
The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense – the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy. William F Buckley
At the last count more than 30 of the Guantanamo Bay detainees had attempted suicide. Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties, 2004
They stalked through a crowd of peaceful protesters along the parade route beating and pepper-spraying people. You can see the man in the red jacket shaking a can of pepper spray in his hand which is government-issued pepper spray. You can see him use the pepper spray – spraying it in close range in people’s faces and eyes. You can also see him spraying it in wide berths. And this is into a crowd of peaceful protesters. People standing along the parade route. People engaged in a classic first-amendment-protected activity. And being attacked by the police department. ibid.
Non-compliance has become a watchword as communities across America fight back against the destruction of civil liberties. ibid.
In 2003 Tony Blair and George Bush started to spread this freedom to Iraq. Three coaches of day trippers set off for the US military base at Fairford, Gloucester to protest against the war. On the way there [they] were pulled over for a routine traffic stop by over a hundred police in riot gear. The officers held them for two hours and searched every nook and cranny. Taking Liberties