Post negative quotes here

Click answer to post negative quotes here.

"Now what is Judge Douglas' Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object." - Abraham Lincoln

"We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child." - Ronald Reagan
(the rights of the individual)

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” - Thomas Jefferson

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
- Thomas Jefferson

(oops)

“(Democracy is a government) of the fools, for the fools, by the fools.”
- George Bernard Shaw

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
Joseph Stalin

Isn't the negative for individual rights?

If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations... And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of history... To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to excercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen... In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies... - John Adams

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself. - John Locke

"All mankind… being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions."
John Locke

"Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”
-Ayn Rand (Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter)


"I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights”
-Abraham Lincoln

"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights”
-William Blackstone (English judge, jurist and professor who produced the historical and analytic treatise on the common law)

I could post more, but I'll save some for others

Christian Di Lorenzo wrote:

Isn't the negative for individual rights?

Umm, Yeah. I go mixed up and posted my quotes on the wrong pages. Thanks Chrisitian

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities." - Lord Acton

"If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations... And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of history... To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to excercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen... In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies..." - John Adams

"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can." - Samuel Adams

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
Lord Acton

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions
Alan Barth

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. - Lord Acton

1: Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship. -Patrick Henry

2: Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). -Ayn Rand (Ayn Rand is not Christian, but she made some great points about ndividual rights.)

Yet those who support the detention of American citizens without a trial turn the principle of individual rights up upon its head. They say, in effect, that national security allows the government to imprison citizens without having to prove its case under the law, and that the mere attempt to question the government on the strength of its evidence in a courtroom is itself is a threat to national security. Such a view is wrong and it is wicked; it represents perhaps the gravest threat to freedom in America today.

www.capitalismmagazine.com/politics/rights/3710-Conservativism-Individual-Rights.html

Capitalism Magazine


I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
Clarence Thomas

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.
-William Blackstone

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
- Robert Ingersoll

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
-Lord Acton

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
-Ronald Reagan

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
-Ayn Rand

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
-James Madison

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
-James Madison

“I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.”

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

“Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.” - Oscar Wilde

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. - John Adams

You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments: rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe. - John Adams

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. - Samuel Adams

Winston Churchill, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

"The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom."
- Claudia Lady Bird Johnson

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - Thomas Jefferson