“Whenever someone must buy a license or pay a fee to exercise a right, then it is something less than a right. It is in fact a mere privilege, subject to the whim of petty bureaucrats. Fundamental rights are not abstract tokens that are given or sold by other men. They are in fact primary liberties bestowed upon us by God, our maker. Rights are not substantially secured by asking, "Mother may I?" of any government agency. Rights are more properly demanded or boldly seized and then conspicuously exercised regularly. This secures the liberties that have legitimately belonged to us since birth. If need be, lost rights can and must be restored through proscriptive use. If you live in a land where your rights have been marginalized into privileges, then it is either time to change your government, or to change your address. Much like a muscle that atrophies with disuse, any right that goes unexercised for many years devolves into a privilege, and eventually can even be redefined as a crime.”

—  James Wesley Rawles

http://www.survivalblog.com/2012/11/notes-from-jwr-551.html
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York (2009)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Whenever someone must buy a license or pay a fee to exercise a right, then it is something less than a right. It is in …" by James Wesley Rawles?
James Wesley Rawles photo
James Wesley Rawles 26
Survivalist-fiction author and blogger 1960

Related quotes

Benjamin Franklin photo

“[Freedom is] not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

This is actually from an essay "On Government No. I" that appeared in Franklin's paper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, on 1 April 1736. The author was John Webbe. He wrote about the privileges enjoyed under British rule,
:Thank God! we are in the full enjoyment of all these privileges. But can we be taught to prize them too much? or how can we prize them equal to their value, if we do not know their intrinsic worth, and that they are not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature?
Misattributed

“By this I refer to the fact that at the same time several people may each possess some portion of the rights to use the land. A may possess the right to grow wheat on it. B may possess the right to walk across it. C may possess the right to dump ashes and smoke on it. D may possess the right to fly an airplane over it. E may have the right to subject it to vibrations consequent to the use of some neighboring equipment. And each of these rights may be transferable. In sum, private property rights to various partitioned uses of land are "owned" by different persons.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

Source: Economic Forces at Work, 1977, p. 132-133

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“It is from the exercise of this right that the guarantee of all our other rights flows. Unless the right to vote be secure and undenied, all other rights are insecure and subject to denial for all our citizens. The challenge to this right is a challenge to America itself. We must meet this challenge as decisively as we would meet a challenge mounted against our land from enemies abroad.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)
Context: In our system, the first right and most vital of all our fights is the right to vote. Jefferson described the elective franchise as "the ark of our safety." It is from the exercise of this right that the guarantee of all our other rights flows. Unless the right to vote be secure and undenied, all other rights are insecure and subject to denial for all our citizens. The challenge to this right is a challenge to America itself. We must meet this challenge as decisively as we would meet a challenge mounted against our land from enemies abroad.

George Fitzhugh photo

“The bestowing upon men equality of rights, is but giving license to the strong to oppress the weak. It begets the grossest inequalities of condition.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 233

Henry George photo

“The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

Book VII, Ch. 1
Progress and Poverty (1879)

Frederick Douglass photo

“The Abolitionists were right in their attitude to the Church. Slavery and the Church were side by side: the Church was at peace with slavery: men were sold to build churches, women sold to pay missionaries, and children sold to buy Bibles. We did right to oppose it.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1890s, Speech at the Abolitionist Reunion in Boston (1890)

Steve King photo

“Without the right to life, how would an individual’s rights become vested? How could any other rights be realized if one’s very life could be taken away by another who is exercising their right to liberty or pursuit of happiness? Jefferson articulated a prioritized set of rights; first the right to life, then the right to liberty, then the pursuit of happiness. Each right was carefully prioritized in sequential order because the right to life trumps all other rights. No one can take a human life in exercising their liberties and no one can take a life or take away the liberty of another in their pursuit of happiness. If the right to life can be taken by another, then no right of anyone is protected.”

Steve King (1949) US Representative for Iowa

Rep. Steve King: Protecting the Unborn Reaffirms Jefferson’s Truths http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/01/exclusive-rep-steve-king-protecting-the-unborn-reaffirms-jeffersons-truths/ (November 1, 2017)

John Green photo

“Is health care a privilege, or is it a right? If it's a privilege, even if it's a really desirable privilege like indoor plumbing, we need to stop giving health care of any kind to uninsured people who can't pay for it in advance. But… …I think the reason we continue to treat people who are uninsured is because we don't believe that health care is a privilege. We believe that it is a right. And if it is a right, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the responsibility of a government to protect that right.”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via Massive Pig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z_RVl-ph3s
YouTube

Ilana Mercer photo

“Liberty is not an aggregate social project. Every individual has rights. And rights give rise to obligations between all men, including those who are in power. That men band in a collective called 'government' doesn't give them license to violate individual rights.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Defunct Foundations of the Republic,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=528 WorldNetDaily.com, January 1, 2010.
2010s, 2010

“If we all don't enjoy the same rights, then no one enjoys any rights at all; some of us merely enjoy privilege.”

Wendy Kaminer (1949) American lawyer

"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995)
Context: Not everything that appears true is true. The ACLU is devoted to some very controversial principles — like the principle that everyone who is arrested should enjoy the same constitutional rights, regardless of their alleged crime or their character. We don't take that position to irritate people; we take that position because we believe in it. We believe in it, in part, in a spirit of enlightened self-interest, because the rights of each one of us are co-extensive with the rights of everyone who is arrested and prosecuted in the criminal courts. If we all don't enjoy the same rights, then no one enjoys any rights at all; some of us merely enjoy privilege.

Related topics