Natural Rights quotes:

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Therefore, states are equal in natural rights. -- William H. Seward
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can. -- Samuel Adams
Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws. -- Calvin Coolidge
A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government. -- Lysander Spooner
All... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law. -- Thomas Jefferson
Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights. -- Thomas Jefferson
The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. -- Thomas Jefferson
Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established. -- Thomas Jefferson
We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. -- Voltaire
The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right. -- James Madison
These our great natural rights we keep to ourselves; we will not have them tampered with; respecting them we give to you no commission whatsoever. -- Caleb Cushing
I grew up in a family that despised not only communism but collectivism, socialism, and any 'ism' that deprived the individual of his or her natural rights. -- Rand Paul
Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever -- Joseph Priestley
Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever. -- Joseph Priestley
I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. -- Thomas Jefferson
If two individuals enter into a contract to commit trespass, theft, robbery or murder upon a third, the contract is unlawful and void, simply because it is a contract to violate natural justice, or men's natural rights. -- Lysander Spooner
The very idea of law originates in men's natural rights. There is no other standard, than natural rights, by which civil law can be measured. Law has always been the name of that rule or principle of justice, which protects those rights. Thus we speak of natural law. -- Lysander Spooner
[If you understood the natural rights of mankind,] [y]ou would be convinced that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that, and cannot be wrested from any people without the most manifest violation of justice. -- Alexander Hamilton
There is no right to a job or a wage rate, but there is a right to move from one country to another in search of a better life. This is the point of view of Thomas Jefferson, John Locke and other great supporters of the natural rights tradition in America. -- Alex Tabarrok
We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off. -- John Trudell
Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others. -- Thomas Paine
It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. -- Thomas Jefferson
Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety. -- Alexander Hamilton
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction - to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens. -- George Washington
Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind. -- Alexander Hamilton
A human being has no natural rights of any nature. -- Robert A. Heinlein
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Natural rights, nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, elevated nonsense, nonsense going on stilts. -- John Stuart Mill
[Louis Brandeis] believes in natural rights of speech and liberty and the right to pursue happiness. -- Jeffrey Rosen
How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited. -- Jefferson Davis
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But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights. -- Garrett Hardin
To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question. -- Carl L. Becker
True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate. -- Marquis de Lafayette
And also a lot of Muslims are no more religious then the average Swede. For them it's natural that human rights come first. -- Bjorn Ulvaeus
Liberty, whether natural, civil, or political, is the lawful power in the individual to exercise his corresponding rights. It is greatly favored in law. -- Henry Campbell Black
Toleration in religion was one of the great rights of man, and a man ought never to be deprived of what was his natural right. -- Charles James Fox
The electronic spectrum is the only natural resource in which there's no such thing as private property rights. You can't own a piece of the spectrum. -- Adrian Cronauer
Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, asserted, carried out, and secured by modes of human contrivance. -- Gerrit Smith
No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. -- Thomas Jefferson
In speaking of natural rights, therefore, it is essential to remember that these alleged rights have no political force whatsoever, unless recognized and enforced by the state. -- Charles Edward Merriam
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression. -- Thomas Paine
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. -- George Washington
[The] prevailing reason at this time is, that the Act of Parliament is against the Magna Charta, and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void. -- Thomas Hutchinson

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