Quotes about right
page 93

Maithripala Sirisena photo
Fiona Apple photo
Ayn Rand photo
Margaret Mead photo
Oscar Niemeyer photo
H.V. Sheshadri photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo
Heidi Hautala photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“To put it quite clearly: we have an economic programme. Point No. 13 in that programme demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words socialisation, or what is known here as socialism. … the basic principle of my Party’s economic programme should be made perfectly clear and that is the principle of authority… the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners. If you say that the bourgeoisie is tearing its hair over the question of private property, that does not affect me in the least. Does the bourgeoisie expect some consideration from me?… Today’s bourgeoisie is rotten to the core; it has no ideals any more; all it wants to do is earn money and so it does me what damage it can. The bourgeois press does me damage too and would like to consign me and my movement to the devil.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Hitler's interview with Richard Breiting, 1931, published in Edouard Calic, ed., “First Interview with Hitler, 4 May 1931,” Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931 Interviews, New York: John Day Co., 1971, pp. 31-33. Also published under the title Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931, published by Chatto & Windus in 1971
1930s

John Ireland (bishop) photo
Arlo Guthrie photo
Michael Savage photo
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi photo
Danny Kruger photo
Robert Hall photo

“Call things by their right names… Glass of brandy and water! That is the current but not the appropriate name: ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Gregory's Life of Hall, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin", Diogenes Laërtius, Pythagoras, vi. "A drunkard clasp his teeth and not undo 'em, To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em", Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Act iii, Scene 1.

“"Yeah, right. I know what's really going on: Heather's hired you to kill me, hasn't she?"
"Sammy!"
"Why else would you catapult me through the air and feed me to a man-eating cot?"”

Wendelin Van Draanen (1965) American writer

Sammy Keyes to Marissa Mackenzie, Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Mustache Mary (2000)

Frederick Douglass photo

“A man's right to speak does not depend upon where he was born or upon his color. The simple quality of manhood is the solid basis of the right - and there let it rest forever.”

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

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Hugo Chávez photo

“Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can’t be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can’t be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez during his closing speech at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. January 31, 2005. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1486
2005

Nathanael Greene photo
Huey P. Newton photo
Lycurgus photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Daniel Goleman photo
Andrew Sullivan photo
George Mason photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Kage Baker photo
Clement Attlee photo

“You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign affairs are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin. His task is quite sufficiently difficult without the irresponsible statements of the kind you are making... I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Harold Laski, Chairman of the Labour Party (1946), quoted in David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 289.
Prime Minister

Luís de Camões photo

“He who inflicts a vile and unjust harm by using the power and the force with which he is invested, does not conquer; the true victory is to have on one's side Right naked and entire.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Quem faz injúria vil e sem razão,
Com forças e poder em que está posto,
Não vence; que a vitória verdadeira
É saber ter justiça nua e inteira.
Stanza 58, lines 5–8 (tr. Joaquim Nabuco)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto X

“Perhaps our own fin-de-siècle decadence takes the form, not of libertarian excess, but of the kind of over-the-top puritanism we see in political correctness and the assorted moral certainties of physical fitness fanatics, New Agers and animal-rights activists.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"Back to the Heady Future", review of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, originally published in the [London] Daily Telegraph (1993)
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“But there is still a considerable difference between a failure to do enough that is right and a determination to do much that is wrong.”

Chapter IX https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Cause and Consequence, Section VIII, p 192
The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Jane Addams photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Punk: [after hearing John Laurinaitis propose a WWE Championship match at Survivor Series against Alberto Del Rio] Okay, pardon me for not being all smiles, that's exactly what I want, but… what's the catch? You gonna make it a handicap match, or is Ricardo Rodriguez the special guest referee? No, are you gonna be the special guest ring announcer with your majestic voice?
Laurinaitis: Punk, there's only one thing you have to do.
Punk: There's one thing I have to do… for you. I have to do something for you to get a title shot? Let me guess—I gotta re-grip your skateboard, you need new ball bearings?
Laurinaitis: You know what, Punk? I know you don't like me, okay? And that's okay. I'm not playing the part of Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, I am the Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and the General Manager of Raw. So in order for me to make it official, you need to tell me in front of the WWE Universe that you respect me. Tell me that you respect me.
Punk: Are you Aretha Franklin? You want me to tell these people I respect you when I know clearly that you don't respect me 'cause I don't wear a bourgeois suit and I don't tow the company line? You wanna talk about respect? Respect, Johnny, is earned, it isn't just given. And you're gonna come out here and say that when you're in charge, this place… this place is just oh so run like a tight ship. Have you watched the product? We've got rings collapsing, you got Kevin Nash interfering in every other match of mine; this place isn't any better with you in charge. How's that for respect?
Laurinaitis: Punk, you're about to make a big mistake. Okay, swallow your pride, stand up like a man, and tell me that you respect me.
Punk: Okay. All right. Don't get hot. [Imitating Laurinaitis] I respect you, Funk-man. That all right? Was that good enough?
Laurinaitis: I tell you what, Punk. You've got one more chance to show me and tell me you respect me, and I mean it.
Punk: Okay, Mr. Laurinaitis, sir, Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and interim Raw General Manager. I respect you. I respect the fact that each week, you come out here in front of the millions of fans in the WWE Universe, live on the USA Network, with this awesome, completely lost deer-in-the-headlights look on your face; I respect the fact that you don't know how close to hold the microphone to your mouth when you speak; I respect the fact that you used to compete in this ring with your awesome Kentucky waterfall mullet, and you were never any good, but you somehow still ascended to the top of the WWE corporate structure, showing the world new-found levels of brown-nosery; but above all, I respect the fact that never before in this business has somebody with so little done so much! I respect you! How's that sound?! Does that sound good enough for you?!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

October 24, 2011
WWE Raw

Thomas Wolfe photo
Salvador Dalí photo

“.. the paint marks [in Impressionist paintings] placed apparently without order and which suddenly became magnificently ordered if one knew how to make the right distance.... to communicate a deep, sun-drenched image of a stream, landscape or face.... My eyes were popping out of my head.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

as cited in The Unspeakable confessions of Salvador Dali, Parinaud, ed. W. H. Allen, London 1976, p. 42
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980, Comment on deviant Dali, les aveux inavouables de Salvador Dali

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Chris Kamara photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Mobutu Sésé Seko photo
Geert Wilders photo
Björk photo

“I was talking to a friend about it recently and I told him that the thing about making that film that upset me most was how cruel Lars is to the woman he is working with. Not that I can't take it, because I'm pretty tough and completely capable of defending myself, but because my ideals of the ultimate creator were shattered. And my friend said "What did you expect? All major directors are "sexist", a maker is not necessarily an expert in human rights or female/male equality!
My answer was that you can take quite sexist film directors like Woody Allen or Stanley Kubrick and still they are the one that provide the soul to their movies. In Lars von Trier's case it is not so and he knows it. He needs a female to provide his work soul. And he envies them and hates them for it. So he has to destroy them during the filming. And hide the evidence. What saves him as an artist, though, is that he is so painfully honest that even though he will manage to cover up his crime in the "real" world (he is a genius to set things up that everybody thinks it is just his female-actress-at-the-moment imagination, that she is just hysterical or pre-menstrual), his films become a documentation of this "soul-robbery.”

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

Breaking the Waves is the clearest example of that.
bjork."
From the www.bjork.com http://www.bjork.com 4um, posted by Björk in response to a question about her conflict with director Lars von Trier during the production of Dancer in the Dark.
Other quotes

Woodrow Wilson photo

“What is at at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice, -- no mere peace of shreds and patches.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

1910s, Address to Congress: Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances (1918)

Thomas Jefferson photo
Tony Buzan photo
Begum Aga Khan photo
Isa Genzken photo
George Holyoake photo

“Mr. Owen looked upon men through the spectacles of his own good-nature. He seldom took Lord Brougham's advice "to pick his men." He never acted on the maxim that the working class are as jealous of each other as the upper classes are of them. The resolution he displayed as a manufacturer he was wanting in as a founder of communities…. No leader ever took so little care as Mr, Owen in guarding his own reputation. He scarcely protested when others attached his name to schemes which were not his. The failure of Queenwood was not chargeable to him. When his advice was not followed he would say : "Well, gentlemen, I tell you what you ought to do. You differ from me. Carry out your own plans. Experience will show you who is right." When the affair went wrong then it was ascribed to him. Whatever failed under his name the public inferred failed through him. Mr. Owen was a general who never provided himself with a rear guard. While he was fighting in the front ranks priests might come up and cut off his commissariat. His own troops fell into pits against which he had warned them. Yet he would write his next dispatch without it occurring to him to mention his own defeat, and he would return to his camp without missing his army. Yet society is not so well served that it need hesitate to forgive the omissions of its generous friends. To Mr. Owen will be accorded the distinction of being a philosopher who devoted himself to founding a Science of Social Improvement and a philanthropist who gave his fortune to advance it. Association, which was but casual before his day, he converted into a policy and taught it as an art. He substituted Co-operation for coercion in the conduct ot industry and the willing co-operation of intelligence certain of its own reward, for sullen labour enforced by the necessity of subsistence, seldom to be relied on and never satisfied.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Robert M. La Follette Sr. photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Curt Flood photo

“After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States.”

Curt Flood (1938–1997) baseball player

Letter to Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, December 24, 1969
Cited in, Richard D. Carter, Curt Flood (1971). The Way It Is, Trident Press, ISBN 0-671-27076-1.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Sandra Fluke photo
David Hume photo

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov’d by death, and cou’d I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou’d be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic’d reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I am certain there is no such principle in me… But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”

Part 4, Section 6
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Christopher Hitchens photo
John Scalzi photo
Neville Chamberlain photo

“Never for one single moment have I doubted the rightness of what I did at Munich, nor can I believe that it was possible for me to do more than I did to prepare the country for war after Munich, given the violent & persistent opposition I had to fight against all the time.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Stanley Baldwin (17 October 1940), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 456.
Post-Prime Ministerial

Noam Chomsky photo
Gabrielle Roy photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Not attribution to Jefferson earlier than William Jennings Bryan's Baltimore address of January 20, 1900
California Digital Newspaper Collection, Los Angeles Herald http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19000121.2.94.; appears in proximity to a reference to Jefferson in the 1878 "Notes of a Voyage to California Via Cape Horn", reprinting a 1850 Sacramento advertisment
via Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=Cis3Ni8wJkgC&pg=PA280 Samuel Curtis Upham, "Notes of a Voyage to California Via Cape Horn: Together with Scenes in El Dorado, in the Year 1849-'50, with an Appendix Containing Reminiscences: Together with the Articles of Association and Roll of Members of "The Associated Pioneers of the Territorial Days of California".. Earliest known variant is from the August 31, 1844 issue of "Niles' National Register", authored by the committee of William C. Bryant, George P. Barker, John W. Edmonds, David Dudley Field, Theodore Sedgwick, Thomas W. Tucker, and Isaac Townsend.
via Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=M1oUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA438.
Misattributed

Porphyry (philosopher) photo

“Every good thing is gentle and consistent, progressing in good order and not going beyond what is right.”

Porphyry (philosopher) (233–301) Neoplatonist philosopher

2, 39, 4
On Abstinence from Killing Animals

John F. Kennedy photo

“Five score years ago the ground on which we here stand shuddered under the clash of arms and was consecrated for all time by the blood of American manhood. Abraham Lincoln, in dedicating this great battlefield, has expressed, in words too eloquent for paraphrase or summary, why this sacrifice was necessary. Today, we meet not to add to his words nor to amend his sentiment but to recapture the feeling of awe that comes when contemplating a memorial to so many who placed their lives at hazard for right, as God gave them to see right. Among those who fought here were young men who but a short time before were pursuing truth in the peaceful halls of the then new University of Notre Dame. Since that time men of Notre Dame have proven, on a hundred battlefields, that the words, "For God, For Country, and For Notre Dame," are full of meaning. Let us pray that God may grant us the wisdom to find and to follow a path that will enable the men of Notre Dame and all of our young men to seek truth in the halls of study rather than on the field of battle."”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Message from the President on the Occasion of Field Mass at Gettysburg, delivered by John S. Gleason, Jr." (29 June 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 10, President's Outgoing Executive Correspondence, White House Central Chronological Files, Papers of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
1963

“You do not have the right to use this art form to feel inferior.”

Martin de Maat (1949–2001) American theatre director

As quoted by a former student "TJ" (23 March 2006) http://yesandblog.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_yesandblog_archive.html

Cory Booker photo

“The reality is we have to make sure that we have a military that’s prepared, but right now, we have more military spending than the next 10, 11, 12 countries combined, and we’ve got to start realizing that we can secure and protect ourselves, but also be responsible in the way that we do that," Booker said. And it’s not unpatriotic to say that we’re spending too much money. In fact, to me, that’s the patriotic thing to say.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

From Real Time with Bill Maher, as quoted in [Wichert, Bill, Cory Booker says U.S. military spending is greater than the next 10-12 countries combined, https://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2013/feb/10/cory-booker/cory-booker-says-us-military-spending-greater-next/, PolitiFact, 21 August 2018, February 10th, 2013]
2013

Margaret Cho photo
Michael Moore photo

“Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. … If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D. C., and the planes' destination of California — these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

Statement of 12 September 2001 attributed to Moore, as published in [Michael Moore, Humbug, City Journal, Summer 2003, Kay S., Hymowitz, http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_michael_moore.html]
2001

Samuel Adams photo

“The journey here was fraught with all kinds of opposition and venom. Through three courts, right upto the Court of Appeal to defend before three eminent judges my constitutional rights to be registered in the VKB; I struggled and I won.”

James Ah Koy (1936) Fijian politician

Maiden speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=165&viewtype=full, 8 December 2003 (excerpts)

Jean-François Lyotard photo
Chris Murphy photo

“My truth hierarchy: (1) health care is a human right (2) climate change is an existential threat (3) the Yankees suck.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

Day 2017 Is Finally Here, Red Sox Fans" http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2017/04/03/opening-day-red-sox-social-media/"Opening, Boston Magazine, 3 April 2017.

Nelson Mandela photo

“When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on Aids, 46664 Concert, Tromso, Norway (11 Jun 2005). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
2000s

Ravachol photo

“We would no doubt end up understanding quicker that the anarchists are right when they say that in order to have moral and physical tranquillity, we must destroy the causes that create crimes and criminals : it is not by suppressing he who, rather than die a slow death by the deprivations that he has had to and will have to undergo, with no hope of seeing them end, prefers, if he has a bit of energy, take by force that which can assure him well-being, even at the risk of his own death which can only be an end to his sufferings.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

On finira sans doute plus vite par comprendre que les anarchistes ont raison lorsqu'ils disent que pour avoir la tranquillité morale et physique, il faut détruire les causes qui engendrent les crimes et les criminels : ce n'est pas en supprimant celui qui, plutôt que de mourir d'une mort lente par suite de privation qu'il a eues et aurait à supporter, sans espoir de les voir finir, préfère, s'il a un peu d'énergie, prendre violemment ce qui peut lui assurer le bien-être, même au risque de sa mort qui ne peut être qu'un terme à ses souffrances.
Trial statement

John Fortescue photo
Alfred Russel Wallace photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“People have been willing to accept that the government is lying to us, but [are now also] more willing to accept the concept of aliens and other life forms. There's just a slew of stuff out there right now. It's been people's closet belief system, and now it's coming out of the closet.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Kate O'Hare, Tribune Media Services (December 2, 1994) "The Voice of Reason Speaks on FOX's 'X-Files'", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 10F.
1990s

George William Russell photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Errico Malatesta photo
Morrissey photo
Peter Weiss photo
Ezra Koenig photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Thomas Hobbes photo

“In the state of nature, Profit is the measure of Right.”
...in statu naturae Mensuram juris esse Utilitatem.

De Cive (1642)