Rights

"How did it happen that the Constitution was interpreted to mean that the government has the authority to arrange abortions for 14-year-old girls without notifying parents? What mangled interpretations of the Constitution led high-placed judges to decide that the people of various states, by their vote, do not have a constitutional right to put an end to that heinous form of infanticide known as the partial-birth abortion, do not have the right to deny homosexuals preferential treatment under the law, and do not have the right to withhold the benefits of citizenship from illegal immigrants? When and by whom was it decided that the government has the right to hand out condoms to children without the consent of parents? When did the American people agree to that? By what vote, by what law? How soon before some fanciful Supreme Court Justice has a judicial epiphany, and finds the precious right to sodomy, heretofore unnoticed, lurking in the bowels of the Constitution?"
        --Linda Bowles

"Let not your children have reason to curse you for prostrating those institutions and giving up those rights which your fathers delivered unto you."
        --Matthias Burnet

"Those who want their rights respected under the Constitution and the law ought to set the example themselves of observing the Constitution and the law."
        --Calvin Coolidge

"One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no election."
        --Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette

"The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God."
        --John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
        --P.J. O'Rourke