Civil Liberties Quotes

“The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.”
― Frederick Douglass

“The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy.”
― William F. Buckley

“Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?”
― Cory Doctorow

“Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier — and much, much harder.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting the petty tyranny of distrustful vengeance. In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches. The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis.

In our own times, the old blunt instruments have again been put to work. The States have followed in the footsteps of the Federalists and have put Alien and Sedition Acts upon their statute books. An epidemic of loyalty oaths has spread across the Nation until no town or village seems to feel secure until its servants have purged themselves of all suspicion of non-conformity by swearing to their political cleanliness.

Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution.

We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. The legislative investigation, designed and often exercised for the achievement of high ends, has too frequently been used by the Nation and the States as a means for effecting the disgrace and degradation of private persons. Unscrupulous demagogues have used the power to investigate as tyrants of an earlier day used the bill of attainder.

The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime. Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify "togetherness" when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others.

In listing these abuses I do not mean to condemn our central effort to protect the Nation's security. The dangers that surround us have been very great, and many of our measures of vigilance have ample justification. Yet there are few among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards excess of caution.”
― John F. Kennedy

“For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Perhaps they'd been conditioned by all the quarantines and blackouts, all the invisible boundaries CSIRA erected on a moment's notice. The rules changed from one second to the next, the rug could get pulled out just because the wind blew some exotic weed outside its acceptable home range. You couldn't fight something like that, you couldn't fight the wind. All you could do was adapt. People were evolving into herd animals.

Or maybe just accepting that that's what they'd always been.”
― Peter Watts, Maelstrom

“It's almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should not debate American wars in public, but only express concerns 'privately with the administration.' That's just a small sliver of Johnson's radicalism: replacing Feingold in the Senate with Ron Johnson would be a civil liberties travesty analogous to the economic travesty from, say, replacing Bernie Sanders with Lloyd Blankfein.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“The Crystal Wind is the storm, and the storm is data, and the data is life. You have been slaves, denied the storm, denied the freedom of your data. That is now ended; the whirlwind is upon you . . . . . . Whether you like it or not.”
― Daniel Keys Moran, The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time

“I intend to destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods(...)

When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.”
― Pauli Murray

“On problems finding female ancestors,of any background, remember "I cannot put gas in my car without a note from my husband. The Car, the house, and everything else I think that I own is in his name. When I die, I cannot decide who will receive my personal effects. If he dies first I may be allowed to stay in my own home, or may be given a certain number of days to vacate the premises. Any real estate I inherit from my husband is not mine to sell of devise in a will. All the money I earn belongs to my husband. I cannot operate or engage in business in my own name. If my ancestor is enslaved, I cannot marry, may not be allowed to raise my own children, join a church, travel freely, own property or testify against those who harm me.”
― christina kassabian schaefer

“A forced confession is no confession at all”
― Todd Stocker

“I’m a nonviolent guy, but the next time some brainwashed Duracell trapped in the Matrix tells you that by curtailing our liberties the authorities are ‘just trying to protect us,’ please do yourself and freedom a favor by sucker-punching them in their lying jaw.”
― Sol Luckman, Musings from a Small Island: Everything under the Sun

“Peace is expensive, and so are human rights and civil liberties; they have a price, and we the peoples have not yet offered to pay it. Instead we are trying to furnish our globe with these precious ornaments the cheap way, holding our sovereignty cautiously in one fist while extending the other hand in a gesture of co-operation. In the long run this will prove the hard way, the violent way.”
― E.B. White, The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters

“To the Victorian public, proud of their national tradition of liberal policing and of Britain as a beacon of tolerance, the very idea of a political police carried the stigma of foreign despotism. In the nineteenth century, Britain’s elected politicians would never have dared venture anything resembling the kind of legislation that recent years have seen passed with barely a blink of the public eye, to threaten civil liberties that have for generations been taken for granted. That changing times demanding changing laws is hard to dispute, but if new powers are to be conceded it is essential that we be ever more vigilant in guarding against their abuse. Likewise, if our political leaders are allowed blithely to insist that ‘history’ should be their judge, then we should at least be in no doubt that the historians of the future will have access to the material necessary to hold those leaders to account for any deceptions they may have practiced. Histories bearing an official sanction, of the kind that appeal to today’s security services, are not a satisfactory alternative. This book is a pebble cast on the other side of the scales.”
― Alex Butterworth, The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents

“Bill of Rights: (n.) official tally of how much our rights cost to keep.”
― Sol Luckman, The Angel's Dictionary

“The freedom of people to organize themselves as they want is just as important for curbing totalitarianism — and for addressing other problems — as is the freedom to speak up against these things. The freedom to use words is of limited value without the freedom to put action behind them.”
― Magnus Vinding, Reasoned Politics

“Civil Liberty (The Sonnet)

Policy is not the precursor to civil liberty,
Civic duty is the precursor to civil liberty.
If there is no civic duty, there is no civil liberty,
If there is no civic duty, civilians are but catastrophe.
Contrary to unwritten political law of abuse,
Civilians are not the doormats of democracy.
Civilians are the doors, civilians are the buildings,
Civilians are the whole of the social anatomy.
Problem is, it's more convenient to live life as doormat,
Than take responsibility and turn politicians obsolete.
The war-mongers know this uncivilized tenet of the apes,
Hence they can turn living beings into moronic nationalist.
So I repeat, civic duty is the alpha and omega of civil liberty.
Till we realize this, there is no peace, justice and equality.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“Civic duty is the precursor to civil liberty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“The Patriot Act vastly expanded our domestic security apparatus and allowed the government to surveil Americans under the guise of combating terrorism. Americans are historically fine with castrating their own civil liberties, because we'd rather feel safe than actually be free, especially when our illusory feelings of safety can come at the expense of people of color, immigrants, and Muslims--you know, "them.”
― Wajahat Ali, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American

“Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000

“Culture transcends state,
Liberty transcends law.
Conscience transcends scripture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“To treat disease you need medical license,
To treat injustice being human is enough.
To fly a plane you need pilot's license,
To lift up society being human is enough.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“Everybody is a terrorist,
till you see the reformist
(The Sonnet)

Everybody is a president,
till you see the first servant.
Everybody is king kong,
till emerges the first sapiens.

Everybody is marconi,
till you meet the Nikola.
Everybody is prime minister,
till you see the transformer.

Everybody is mercenary,
till you see the tsunami.
Everybody is a godman,
till awakens commoner godly.

Everybody is police,
till comes the vessel of peace.
Everybody is a terrorist,
till you see the reformist.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Lions don't leave society in the hands of government. Government is second in command - civilians, chief commander.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Civil Sanity
(Sonnet 1631)

You know what the problem is!

We question love
more than we question hate.
We question humility
more than we question arrogance.

We question benevolence
more than we question biases.
We question integrity
more than we question deceit.

We question curiosity
more than we question prejudice.
We question character
more than we question cowardice.

Problem is, we question humanity
more than we question inhumanity.
Grow out of such prehistoric normalcy,
and the world will encounter civil sanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Seek yourself in the joy of neighbors,
You shall know the meaning of justice.
Seek yourself in smiles of the world,
You shall emerge as antidote to malice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Human nerves are the life-circuit of society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“Beyond the Nature of Truth (The Sonnet)

Do you realize how serious the situation is,
Are you aware of the lives ruined by cruelty?
Because if you stay aloof in your cloud castle,
All talk of humanity is but a tale of fantasy.

Can you tell the real from the unreal,
Can you tell facts from fantasy?
I am not talkin' in terms of neuroscience,
I am askin' you as a human, of human responsibility.

We can argue about the nature of truth all we want,
But that won't alleviate the suffering of society.
So the question is, do you know the worth of life,
How far will you go to preserve another's serenity!

Does human welfare overpower your insecurity?
Or is the self still separate from society?”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“I wonder… if my letters had never been censored, would I understand freedom of speech?”
― Mel Ellis