A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
Kahlil Gibran

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.
Ronald Reagan

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
Ronald Reagan

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.
Mohandas Gandhi

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.
Marilyn Monroe

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.
P. J. O'Rourke

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.
John Wooden

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Ayn Rand

A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
Ayn Rand