The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: The question to be tried by you is whether a man has the right to express his honest thought; and for that reason there can be no case of greater importance submitted to a jury. And it may be well enough for me, at the outset, to admit that there could be no case in which I could take a greater — a deeper interest. For my part, I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.
I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips — to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain.
A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men.
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
“With tears we sow seeds of prayer in the earth of the heart, hoping to reap the harvest in joy.”
§ 73
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)
Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 32, p. 73.
“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”
Deming Headlight (New Mexico), 6 January 1950, as cited in the Yale Book of Modern Proverbs and at There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Facts; Freakonomics blog post by Fred R. Shapiro http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/18/there-are-opinions-and-then-there-are-facts/ (18 August 2011)
“It is a Reasonable presumption that a man who sleeps upon his rights has not got much right.”
Ex parte Hall; In re Wood (1883), L. R. 23 C. D. 653.
Second Treatise of Government, Ch. V, sec. 27
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Letter to Oliver Evans (16 January 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) Vol. 13, p. 66
1810s
Context: A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have.
“Where a man has but one remedy to come at his right, if he loses that he loses his right.”
2 Raym. Rep. 954.
Ashby v. White (1703)
A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
Context: It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.
