A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights
Anarchical Fallacies (1843)
Context: That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle.
“True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate”
Speech (3 January 1834), quoted in Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (1999), p. 256
Context: True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate, just as national sovereignty is above the secondary agreements of the government.
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Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette 7
French general and politician 1757–1834Related quotes
On Subsistence, (2 December 1792)
Neo Masisi https://allafrica.com/stories/202012040594.html Botswana First Lady Neo Jane Masisi Speech delivered at the virtual launch of the W Summit Impact week 2020 (4 December 2020) Retrieved 5 November 2021.
An End To Evil: How To Win the War on Terror, David Frum, Richard N. Perle, Ballantine (reprint,2004), Chapter 5 'The War Abroad,' p. 102 : ISBN 0345477170
Final Speech at the Trial of Warren Hastings, 28 May 1794; in The Works of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, vol. 8 (1877) 5th edition, p. 51
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)
Context: On one side, your lordships have the prisoner declaring that the people have no laws, no rights, no usages, no distinctions of rank, no sense of honor, no property; in short that they are nothing but a herd of slaves to be governed by the arbitrary will of a master. On the other side, we assert that the direct contrary of this is true. And to prove our assertion we have referred you to the institutes of Ghinges Khân and of Tamerlane: we have referred you to the Mahomedan law, which is binding upon all, from the crowned head to the meanest subject; a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned, and most enlightened jurisprudence that perhaps ever existed in the world. We have shown you, that if these parties are to be compared together, it is not the rights of the people which are nothing, but rather the rights of the sovereign which are so. The rights of the people are every thing, as they ought to be in the true and natural order of things.
Nobel lecture (2001)
Context: A genocide begins with the killing of one man — not for what he has done, but because of who he is. A campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' begins with one neighbour turning on another. Poverty begins when even one child is denied his or her fundamental right to education. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life, all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.
In this new century, we must start from the understanding that peace belongs not only to states or peoples, but to each and every member of those communities. The sovereignty of States must no longer be used as a shield for gross violations of human rights. Peace must be made real and tangible in the daily existence of every individual in need. Peace must be sought, above all, because it is the condition for every member of the human family to live a life of dignity and security.
D.H. v. H.H. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/al-supreme-court/1303306.html (February 15, 2002), quoted in [2017-09-29, Michelle Goldberg, How Donald Trump Opened the Door to Roy Moore, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/donald-trump-roy-moore.html]
"Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Maximilien Robespierre" (24 April, 1793)
Original: (fr) XXIX. Dans tout état libre, la loi doit surtout défendre la liberté publique et individuelle contre l'autorité de ceux qui la gouvernent. Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.
1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)
Context: The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.