"Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes"
— Daniel Pennac

"I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way."
— Robert Frost

"...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."
— Abigail Adams

"Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?"
— Cory Doctorow

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
— Edward R. Murrow

"The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer?""
— Jeremy Bentham

"Jerry Falwell said that the reason that September 11th happened, the reason that God allowed it to happen, was because of certain people in our country. People like, and I'm quoting, 'the pagans,' which is a motorcycle group. Feminists; he brought up feminists. [...] And I couldn't believe it, he said that God had actually talked to him and said, these were the people. That was the reason. It was those people, and that was the reason God allowed this to happen. And I thought, 'That's odd.' Because God had called me twelve hours before, and He said the reason He was upset was because of people like Jerry Falwell."
— Lewis Black

"Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan."
— Wilhelm Reich

"Before you echo 'Amen' in your home or place of worship, think and remember...a child is listening." "
— Mary Griffith

"I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves."
— Mary Wollstonecraft

"Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"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 Jr.

"We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you do'nt fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity."
— Fred Hampton

"Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government."
— Ezra Taft Benson (The Constitution: A Heavenly Banner)

""At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black." "
— George Clooney

""...until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Martin Luther King Jr. "
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
— Frederick Douglass

"Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges."
— H.L. Mencken

"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."
— Jane Addams

"Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential."
— Kofi Annan

"Writing of only one small part of the broader problem, namely the single-minded pursuit of individualistic 'rights,' [Don] Feder is not wrong to conclude:

Absent a delicate balance--rights and duties, freedom and order--the social fabric begins to unravel. The rights explosion of the past three decades has taken us on a rapid descent to a culture without civility, decency, or even that degree of discipline necessary to maintain an advanced industrial civilization. Our cities are cesspools, our urban schools terrorist training camps, our legislatures brothels where rights are sold to the highest electoral bidder."
— D.A. Carson (The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism)

"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted."
— Isaiah Berlin (The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas)

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

"I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life"
— June Jordan (Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan)

"The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law."
— Aristotle

"Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to forment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation."
— Abigail Adams

"Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government."
— Ezra Taft Benson (The Constitution: A Heavenly Banner)

"It's you who stand to lose, if you are not brave enough to state your case. "
— Garsenda de Forcalquier

"It is undeniable that every human being is entitled to living space, daily bread, and the protection of the law as a common birthright; these are fundamentals and should not be handed out as an act of charity. "
— Alfred Delp, S.J.

"By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making it more effective."
— Karen Armstrong (A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam)

"In the years since his murder, we have transformed King into a kind of innocuous black Santa Claus."
— Timothy B. Tyson (Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story)

"You have no right to be silenced."
— James DeVita (The Silenced)

"The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal applicability and its thiswordliness."
— Immanuel Wallerstein

"President Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man, but if he had fought World War II the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German now."
— Roy Wilkins (Talking it over with Roy Wilkins: Selected speeches and writings)

"I have not stopped water when it should run. I have not made a cutting in a canal of running water."
— Alvin A. Bullock (Running Water)

"In the preface of "The Rifles"
"Another rule we followed was never kill an animal that we were not going to use for food or clothing." Barnabas Piryuaq
"Well, in those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did not know what to do with them.There were thousands and thousands lying there; we walked among them and hit them on the head, and laughed heartily in the abundance which God had created." Jan Welzi 1933. "
— William T. Vollmann (The Rifles)

"But if God had wanted us to think with just our wombs, why did He give us a brain?"
— Clare Booth Luce

"Senator John Stennis:
'The civil rights movement did more to free the white man that the black man. ... It freed my soul.'"
— Joe Biden (Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics)

"In the law, rights are islands of empowerment. . . . Rights contain images of power, and manipulating those images, either visually or linguistically, is central in the making and maintenance of rights. In principle, therefore, the more dizzyingly diverse the images that are propagated, the more empowered we will be as a society."
— Patricia J. Williams ("On Being the Object of Property," Beacon Book of Essays by Contemporary Ameri

"In its annual Best of Issue, readers voted me BEST AUTHOR of Pasadena in the annual Best of Issue in the Pasadena Weekly!!"
— Andre Coleman

"I have not stopped water when it should run. I have not made a cutting a canal of running water."
— Alvin A. Bullock (Running Water)