Topic: Rights, Matches 35 quotes.

Thus, today, brethren, we are in danger of actually surrendering our personal and property rights. This development, if it does occur in full form, will be a sad tragedy for our people. We must recognize that property rights are essential to human liberty.

Former United States Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, from our own State [Utah], carefully stated it as follows: “It is not the right of property which is protected, but the right to property. Property, per se has no rights; but the individual—the man—has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, and the right to his property. The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.” (From George Sutherland’s speech before the New York State Bar Association, January 21, 1921.)

The bond of our secular covenant is the principle of constitutional government. That principle is, in itself, eternal and everlasting, despite the pretensions of temporary tyrannies. The principle of tyranny maintains that human beings are incurably selfish and therefore cannot govern themselves. This concept flies in the face of the wonderful declaration of the Prophet Joseph Smith that the people are to be taught correct principles, and then they are to govern themselves. Dictatorship, however, argues that the people should be governed by the individual or a clique who can seize power through subversion or outright bloodshed. Further, the people are declared to be without guarantees or rights, and the regime is claimed to exist beholden only to the plans and whims of the ruling tyrant.

Our founding fathers, despite some natural fears, clearly regarded the promulgation of the Constitution of the United States as their greatest triumph.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, October 1962

Topics: Freedom, Loss of; Rights

One of the great fundamentals advocated by the founders of this American nation was that of frugal administration of government affairs. Never before in the history of the world has there been such an extravagant expenditure of the people’s money.

Someone made reference to four or five freedoms. We have had more than four or five freedoms, for I think of at least the sixth one—the right under the Constitution of the United States for every man to work how, when, or where he will—and that right has disappeared. It is gone and now lies in the hands of a group who rule the laboring class of the United States.

I point out these few facts to you in substantiation of the point that as a people and a government we are on the high road of apostasy from that inspired Bill of Rights bequeathed to us by the founders of this great republic.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1941

Topics: Bill of Rights; Free Agency; Rights

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God?

Source: Thomas Jefferson
Notes on the State of Virginia

Topics: Rights

As the state’s steady growth over the last 70 years indicates, once the government becomes the supplier of people’s needs, there is no limit to the needs that will be claimed as a basic right.

Source: Lawrence Auster

Topics: Government, Tyranny; Rights

From the scorching fires of every persecution there has arisen some leader with a tongue of fire who has been inspired by the love of Jesus Christ to call men to a higher, a purer and a better life. Jesus promoted the rights of mankind. He is the Creator, he is the Architect of the republican form of government.

Source: Clarence True Wilson
As quoted by Elder Richard R. Lyman in General Conference, October 1940

Topics: Rights

Rights for Robots

Millions of our people now look to the government much in the same fashion that their fathers of Victorian times looked to God. Political authority has taken the place of heavenly guidance.

Herbert Spencer in that wonderful prophecy, The Man Versus the State, explained in detail what would happen. He foretold with exactitude the present rush of the weaklings for jobs as planners and permitters, telling other people what not to do.

You will have noticed that while we are all under the thumb of authority, authority becomes composed of those who, lacking the courage to stand on their own feet and accept their share of personal responsibility, seek the safety of official positions where they escape the consequences of error and failure. Active, energetic, and progressive persons, instead of leading the rest, are allowed to move only by the grace and favor of that section of the population which from its very nature lacks all the qualities needed to produce the desired results. Authority is the power to say no, which requires little or no ability.

On a broad view, the all-important issue in the world today is individualism versus collectivism.

The Individualist thinks of millions of single human souls, each with a spark of divine genius, and visualizes that genius applied to the solution of his own problems. His conception is infinitely higher than that of the politician or planner who at best regards these millions as material for social or political experiment or, at worst, cannon fodder.

Source: Sir Ernest Benn
As quoted in The Freeman, December 1992, p.480

Topics: Rights; Socialism

To the founders, a “right” was a moral imperative by which each person exercises the freedom to be what his qualities and potentials make of him, secure in his person and property, and without transgressing that same right of others. His “rights” thus impose no obligation on others except that they abstain from violating them.

Source: Lawrence W. Reed
Clichés of Politics, p13

Topics: Rights

Men may succeed, by devious means, in taking property that does not belong to them, but such practices will destroy the moral fiber of their being. Right of property is guaranteed to us under the constitution. It is true we are subject to the government and to its regulations; and it is true also that we must cooperate in sustaining the government, but at the same time the rights of property can not be made null and void without destroying the spirit and appreciation of fairness among mankind.

Source: Elder Sylvester Q. Cannon
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Rights

On the 17th of September, 1887, a great celebration was held in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia in honor of the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. The President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, and other distinguished guests were present on that occasion. A chorus of one thousand people rendered the beautiful poem of the German poet Schiller, entitled “An Appeal to Truth,” which had been put to music by Mendelssohn. As they sang the lines of the poem: “Upon the divine truth of the freedom of man and the knowledge of God, does our civilization stand,” the guests stood with bowed heads in gratitude for the blessings of the Lord. Then President Cleveland arose and among other things said: “When we look down one hundred years and see the origin of our Constitution, when we contemplate all its trials and triumphs, when we realize how completely the principles upon which it is based have met every national need and every national peril, how devoutly should we say with Franklin, ‘God governs in the affairs of men,’ and how solemn should be the thought that to us is delivered this ark of the people’s covenant and to us is given the duty to shield it from impious hands. Another centennial day will come, and millions yet unborn will inquire concerning our stewardship and the safety of the Constitution. God grant that they may find it unimpaired.” Today, there are forces at work to undermine this sacred gift of our fathers. These forces are expressed in acts and words of disrespect for law, order, and authority. Lord Macaulay feared for our democratic institutions, and once expressed the thought that institutions purely democratic “must sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.” In reply to this thought of the great English essayist, we can only say that we hope that the citizens of our great republic will have from age to age a finer reverence and greater love for the principles of human rights which are set forth in the Constitution of our country. When our fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and gave us the divine thought: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we must ever remember that there are no rights that are not duties. The Declaration of Independence was not justified if it was not obligatory. So this is true with the still greater document of government, the Constitution of the United States. “There are no rights that are not duties.”

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Rights; US Constitution

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