Topic: Rights, Matches 35 quotes.

Obligation to Live or Right to Life?

The distinction between collecting taxes and compelling military service inheres in the difference between types of obligations and rights. As previously contended, one does have an obligation to society which justifies the payment and the collection, if necessary, of an equitable tax. The societal agency, in collecting the tax, is merely performing its proper role of defending its members against those who would unload their own obligations onto the shoulders of others. Bear in mind that the collection is in livelihood, not life.

However, no person has an obligation, other than to himself, to live. He may, and sometimes does, choose not to live—all suicides being examples. A person is not obligated to society in this respect. To live or not to live is an affair of individual choice. It is a matter between man and his God, not between man and society.

A person does not have an obligation to society to live. He has only the right to live if he so chooses. No societal organization would be justified among a people who had no desire to live. An organized arm of society is founded on and is justified exclusively by the will to live which exists in a people—precisely the same law of nature which attends to potential human energy’s becoming kinetic human energy—that is, which attends to communication and exchange among men.

Source: Leonard E. Read

Topics: Life; Right to Life; Rights

Are we Serfs?

We shall abide all constitutional law, as we always have done; but while we are Godfearing and law-abiding, and respect all honorable men and officers, we are no craven serfs, and have not learned to lick the feet of oppressors, nor to bow in base submission to unreasoning clamor. We will contend, inch by inch, legally and constitutionally, for our rights as American citizens, and for the universal rights of universal man. We stand proudly erect in the consciousness of our rights as American citizens, and plant ourselves firmly on the sacred guarantees of the Constitution; and that instrument, while it defines the powers and privileges of the President, Congress and the judiciary, also directly provides that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.

Source: John Taylor
Journal of Discourses, Vol.23, p.67

Topics: Freedom, Loss of; Rights

Life Is a Gift from God

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Source: Frederic Bastiat
The Law

Topics: Life; Rights

The Foundation of Laws

Let the bar proclaim “the laws, the rights, the generous plan of power” delivered from remote antiquity, inform the world of the mighty struggles and numberless sacrifices made by our ancestors in defense of freedom. Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments but original rights, conditions of original contracts, coequal with prerogative and coeval with government; that many of our rights are inherent and essential . . . . Let them search for the foundations of . . . laws and government in the frame of human nature, in the constitution of the intellectual and moral world. There let us see that truth, liberty, justice, and benevolence are its everlasting basis; and if these could be removed, the superstructure is overthrown of course.

Source: John Adams, 1765

Topics: Law; Rights

Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.

Source: Walter Lippmann

Topics: Rights

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).

Source: Ayn Rand

Topics: Rights

The Role of Government

[The individual] is not just a cog in the wheel of the state. To be such I think is the greatest danger in the world today, but there are those who favor this. They think the state is our protector. It isn’t. The state, as a servant, is here to protect you in your work, on your farm and in your business, and to see that justice is administered; you have a right to that protection.

But the state has not anything that you do not give it.

The government has no financial means but that which you give it, and we give it to the government so that it will protect each individual in his right.

While emphasizing the worth of the individual, I wish to say that the individual in turn owes a duty to society. The world today is demanding that the employer consider his employee not merely as a part of a machine to make money, but as a living, sensitive being entitled to justice and right. It is equally obligatory upon the employee to recognize the employer as one who has equal privileges. It is the duty of the citizen to take this same attitude toward the leaders of his government, and the duty of the churchman to recognize the rights of those appointed to preside. [Secrets of a Happy Life, comp. Llewelyn R. McKay (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1967), p. 61]

Source: David O. McKay

Topics: Government; Rights; Society

I believe with others that government, institutions, and organizations exist primarily for the purpose of securing to the individual his rights, his happiness, and proper development of his character. When organizations fail to accomplish this purpose, their usefulness ends. “So act,” says Kant, “as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, in every case as an end, never as a means only.”

In all ages of the world men have been prone to ignore the personality of others, to disregard men’s rights by closing against them the opportunity to develop. The worth of man is a good measuring rod by which we may judge the rightfulness or the wrongfulness of a policy or principle, whether in government, in business, or in social activities.

Source: David O McKay
General Conference, October 1962

Topics: Rights

To restore freedom, we must reclaim the moral initiative. We must reconsecrate respect for justice as applicable to the individual, not the collective. We must hold as sacrosanct our right to earn and hold property, to direct its use, and to wield it as a shield against malefactors. We must proclaim our right as free, autonomous, and sovereign individuals to do what we want, say what we will, and build our lives without the permission, sanction, or approval of any group. We should and must never be punished for the transgressions of others.

Source: Russell Madden
Punishing the Many, Ideas on Liberty, June 2000.

Topics: Morality; Private Property; Rights

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