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.
“What is the first object of society? It is to maintain the imprescriptible rights of man. What is the first of those rights? The right to life.”
On Subsistence, (2 December 1792)
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Maximilien Robespierre 78
French revolutionary lawyer and politician 1758–1794Related quotes
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)
"Letter From Washington," http://www.panarchy.org/hess/libertarianism.html The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 6 http://web.archive.org/web/20071201123614/http://mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_06_15.pdf (15 June 1969), p. 2
“The Wrong Response to Holtzman”, New York Times, Dec. 30, 1987
The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
Context: Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/hinduism/2005/06/the-world-needs-love.aspx
Youtube: Ben Stein on Glenn Beck's show about Intelligent Design, Ben Stein on Glenn Beck's show about Intelligent Design, 13 November 2007, 2008-04-18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHbdMbSLfb4,
Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).