Rights

Be sure you're right, then go to bed.
~ Captain Billy's Whiz Bang (October 1922), in Studies in American Humor. Volume III (January 1977); William Cole From Scatology to Social History: Captain Billy's Whiz Bang

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.
~ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). Introduction, Section 2: Of the Nature of Laws in General

I look upon those who would deny others the right to urge and argue their position, however irksome or pernicious they may seem, as intellectual and moral cowards.
~ William Edgar Borah

If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (majority opinion), Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972).

The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (dissenting opinion), United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990).

Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.
~ William Jennings Bryan

Property rights are most secure when human rights are most respected.
~ William Jennings Bryan, Speech Accepting the Democratic Nomination for the Presidency, Indianapolis IN (8 August 1900).

The chief duty of governments, in so far as they are coercive, is to restrain those who would interfere with the inalienable rights of the individual, among which are the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to worship God according to the dictates of one's conscience.
~ William Jennings Bryan, Speech before the City Club, Baltimore, Maryland (24 April 1915).

There is nothing, my friends, which more surely commands the respect of mankind, and, let me say, there are few things which more deserve it, than a brave perseverance in a rightous cause.
~ William Cullen Bryant, in Prose Writings of William Cullen Bryant, Vol. II (1884). II. Occasional Addresses. Mexico and Maximilian (speech given 3 October 1867)

We stand for things that are irreconcilable, absolutely. You can't try to do things right and not despise the people who do them wrong. How can I be indifferent? If that doesn't matter, then nothing matters.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915). Part VI: Kronborg. Chapter IX

If any rights should be singularly sacred in our sight, they are those which are denied and trodden in the dust.
~ William Ellery Channing, The Duty of the Free States: or, Remarks Suggested by the Case of the Creole (1842).

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
~ (William) Ramsey Clark, in The New York Times (2 October 1977).

If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr Martin Luther King.
~ (William) Ramsey Clark, in The New York Times (14 April 1987).

We ensure that we protect civil rights. Officers do not engage in profiling. When there are investigatory stops, they articulate and explain their actions.
~ William Colarulo, The Associated Press (9 November 2002). Biker Club Sues Philly Police

A noisy man is always in the right.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Conversation

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the center all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
~ William Cowper, Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk (1782).

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.
~ W. Edwards Deming

If discrimination based on race is constitutionally permissible when those who hold the reins can come up with "compelling" reasons to justify it, then constitutional guarantees acquire an accordion-like quality.
~ William Orville Douglas (dissenting opinion), DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974).

Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas.
~ William Orville Douglas, (1953).

One has a right to freedom of speech whether he talks to one person or to one thousand.
~ William Orville Douglas (dissenting opinion), United States v. International Union, 352 U.S. 567 (1957)

The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government. The Fifth Amendment stands between the citizen and his government.
~ William Orville Douglas (dissenting opinion), Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422 (1956)

The religious freedom which the First Amendment protects has many facets:

1. No sectarian authority shares in the power of government nor sits in its councils.
2. Government has no directive influence in any of the affairs of any church.
3. Citizens are not taxed for the support of any religious institution and no church has any claim on any of the public revenues.
4. People can belong to any church they desire -- or to none at all; and no one is bound to have a ceremony such as marriage performed by any sectarian authority.
5. In disputes between sects or factions of a church over the management of church affairs the civil courts apply not the law applicable to secular affairs but the law that the governing bodies of the church have provided to govern their internal affairs.
6. Public schools are not proper agencies for religious education, though there is no constitutional reason why the state cannot adjust the schedules of the public schools to allow time for the students to get religious instruction elsewhere.
7. Parents and children have the privilege of patronizing private religious schools, rather than public ones, if they so desire.
8. An exercise or ritual may not be exacted by the state from an individual, if it runs counter to his religious convictions.
9. Religious liberty includes not only the conventional methods of worship but the unorthodox as well, such as distributing religious literature from door to door.
10. No license may be exacted by the state for the performance of any religious exercise nor a tax imposed on it.
11. Although the matter has not been authoritatively decided, it would seem that religious liberty extends to atheists as well as to theists, to those who find their religion in ethics and morality, rather than in a Supreme Being.
12. What may be pagan exercises to one person may be a devotional to another. In general it is no business of the government what rite or practice a person selects as a part of his religious beliefs; and he may not be punished for practicing or avowing it.

~ William Orville Douglas, The Right of the People (1958).

The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.
~ William Orville Douglas, Go East, Young Man, the Early Years: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (1974).

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights -- older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects.
~ William Orville Douglas (majority opinion), Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).

We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, Address of the Niagara Movement (August 1906).

It is not always easy to do the right act when we know what it is; but ignorance of what is right makes right action impossible.
~ William Ellis, Progressive Lessons In Social Science (1850).

For right is right, since God is God,
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.
~ Frederick William Faber, The Right Must Win

Most of us regard good luck as our right, and bad luck as a betrayal of that right.
~ William Feather

And I am right,
And you are right,
And all is right as right can be!
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, The Mikado (1885 opera). Act I

If everyone could learn that what is right for me does not make it right for anyone else, the world would be a much happier place.
~ William Glasser, M.D., Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom (1998). Chapter 3: Your Quality World

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.
~ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Book II, Chapter V. Of Rights

There is no zone of twilight in politics or public affairs. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and the same strict standards of morals, equity and just must obtain as in any private business or professional matter.
~ Will H. Hays, (1920)

Right, in a word, is the duty which each man owes to himself; or it is that portion of the general good of which (as being principally interested) he is made the special judge, and which is put under his immediate keeping.
~ William Hazlitt, in Winterslow, Essays and Characters Written There (1850). Project for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation (written in 1828)

The right of property is reducible to this simple principle, that one man has not a right to the produce of another's labour, but each man has a right to the benefit of his own exertions and the use of his natural and inalienable powers, unless for a supposed equivalent and by mutual consent. Personal liberty and property therefore rest upon the same foundation. ... The circle of personal security and right, then, is not an imaginary and arbitrary line fixed by law ... but is real and inherent in the nature of things, and by itself the foundation of law and justice.
~ William Hazlitt, in Winterslow, Essays and Characters Written There (1850). Project for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation (written in 1828)

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong. There is often a good deal of spleen at the bottom of benevolence.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

[T]he greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.
~ William Randolph Hearst, New York American (1 February 1924).

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (G.W.F.) Hegel

There is no moral right to property, to liberty, to life itself, in the absence of good will. The dilemma of the state is that this condition, as a moral condition, cannot be legally administered.
~ William Ernest (W.E.) Hocking, from The Coming World Civilization (1956).

The entire man has but one interest, to be right. That for him is the art of all arts, and all means are fair which help him to it.
~ William James, in The Princeton Review (1882). Rationality, Activity and Faith

Men, who their duties know,
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aim'd blow,
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain.
~ Sir William Jones, An Ode in Imitation of Alcaeus (1781)

There is a need for the recognition and protection of what I would like to call collective rights besides individual rights -- of the freedoms and rights of communities, minorities, institutions, organisations and groups, however defined, besides individual rights.
~ Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk, The promotion of harmony in a pluralistic world (Speech, 21 March 2001).

Only by working along the lines of right thinking and right living can the secrets and wealth of Nature be revealed.
~ William Lawrence, in The World's Work, I (January 1901). The Relation of Wealth to Morals

I'm not the manager because I'm always right, but I'm always right because I'm the manager.
~ Gene William Mauch

Feeling right is a strong drug. Some people sacrifice a lot to be right. Ever hear the expression "dead right"?
~ Peter McWilliams, Life 101: Everything We Wished We Had Learned about Life in School--But Didn't (August 1994).

I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery of libels - all that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow.
~ William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (Lord Mansfield), stated in the Wilkes' Case (1768).

Whoever is right, the persecutor must be wrong.
~ William Penn, (c. 1655)

A insignificant right becomes important when it is assailed.
~ William Pickens, The Ultimate Effects of Segregation and Discrimination (1915).

Reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations.
~ William Pitt (1st Earl of Chatham), Letter to the Earl of Shelburne (29 September 1770)

The thrill of being right is a drug that few can resist.
~ Bill Purdin, Legend, Inc. (accessed May 2003). Quote Archives.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
~ Will Rogers

When a plain man fulfils a promise because he thinks he ought to do so, it seems clear that he does so with no thought of its total consequences, still less with any opinion that these are likely to be the best possible. He thinks in fact much more of the past than of the future. What makes him think it right to act in a certain way is the fact that he has promised to do so -- that and, usually, nothing more.
~ William David (W.D.) Ross, The Right and the Good (1930). II. What Makes Right Acts Right?

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
~ William L. Safire

Showing respect for the human rights of our adversaries is one of the surest ways to make the world safer for ourselves.
~ William F. Schulz, Editorial/Op-Ed in The New York Times (19 January 2002). The Fate of Qaeda Prisoners

To do a great right do a little wrong.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act IV, scene i

We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.
~ William Reece Smith, Jr.

The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to them to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right.
~ William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1906). Chapter I

What we ought to do, what we should do, that we must do, though it bring pain and loss: but why? Because it is right.
~ William Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England (1852). Lecture I

No question is ever settled
Until it is settled right.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Settle the Question Right

Su voto es su voz. (Your vote is your voice.)
~ William C. Velásquez

Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago. ... The government should deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrassing Amendment.
~ George F. Will, (1991)

Don't ever think you know what's right for the other person. He might start thinking he knows what's right for you.
~ Paul Williams, Das Energi (1973).

I'm sorry, if you were right, I'd agree with you.
~ Robin Williams

The Second Amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not to bear artillery.
~ Robin Williams

We all think we are right, or we should not believe as we do.
~ William John Wills, in A Successful Exploration Through The Interior Of Australia, From Melbourne To The Gulf Of Carpentaria (1863). Chapter V

It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the States, and, in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.
~ William B. Woods, Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886).