Individual rights

“ No one of the four elements is more important than the element of individual rights, but there is evidence that we are in danger of forgetting and violating this all-absorbing, gravely important fundamental fact. ”

“ Individual Rights vs. Social Duties.—The greatest weakness to be found in twentieth-century society is the disposition on the part of almost all individuals to place personal rights ahead of social duties. The modern spirit of individualism has grown strong since the Renaissance and the Reformation. ”

“ They have not yet grasped the elementary fact that the rights of the individual are the rights of all individuals, and that Individualism itself calls for a limitation of the freedom of the individual. ”

“ All rights, when the essence of them is spoken of, are powers; powers to an individual, which the governing members of the community guarantee; powers, more or less extensive, of making either a person or a thing subservient to the gratification of his desires. To be made to gratify the desire of an individual, is to be made to render him a service. ”

“ The capacity to conceive a common good as one's own, and to regulate the exercise of one's powers by reference to a good which others recognise, carries with it the consciousness that powers should be so exercised; which means that there should be rights, that powers should be regulated by mutual recognition. There ought to be rights, because the moral personality,—the capacity on the part of an individual for making a common good his own,—ought to be developed ”

“ Legally speaking, there are no such things as "public rights," as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as "the public." ”

“ The foregoing statements and inferences lead to the question, how far should society go in undertaking to regulate the conduct and restrict the freedom of the individual,—that freedom which would be his if he were alone in the world? It may be thought that this is a question of expediency for economists and sociologists, and so it is largely, but it is also a question of rights and hence of justice, since every action or non-action of society affects the freedom of the individual in the gratification of his desires or, in other words, in his pursuit of happiness. ”

“ As a member of society he has forfeited to society, to a certain extent, the freedom of expressing his privileges and rights as an individual, by the infringement upon the privileges and rights of another individual, also a member of the same society ”

“ An objection might fairly be made to distinguishing one class of rights as 'personal,' on the ground that all rights are so; not merely in the legal sense of 'person' according to which the proposition is a truism, since every right implies a person as its subject, but in the moral sense, since all rights depend on that capacity in the individual for being determined by a conception of well-being, as an object at once for himself and for others, which constitutes personality in the moral sense. ”

“ The capacity, then, on the part of the individual of conceiving a good as the same for himself and others, and of being determined to action by that conception, is the foundation of rights; and rights are the condition of that capacity being realised. ”

“ The degree to which the individual judges for himself of the relation between the common good and the laws which cross the path of his ordinary life, is the measure of his intelligent, as distinguished from a merely instinctive, recognition of rights in others and in the state ”

“ They consist in respecting in others the liberty of conscience, the liberty of labor, individual liberty, personal responsibility, all of which are the natural rights of man. However, private individuals may themselves also fail in this kind of duties. ”

“ The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. ”

“ They exist with us here and all around us, and they are rights that affect us, our progenitors, and posterity, worlds without end. But in regard to some of the things with which we are more intimately connected, we have our individual, our social, and political rights, so far as existing here as a people is concerned. ”

“ The principle of citizenship finds expression when certain individuals within the group are delegated to perform as servants and ministers of the public as a whole.XVIII-30 Personal rights and the common good are the two reigning ideals. Every individual is recognized as having a right to the conditions requisite for the full development of his social personality. ”

“ On the other hand, the constitutions of all civilized governments, whether written or unwritten, the principles of the civil as well as those of the common law, and the teachings of wise men of ancient and of modern times, recognize as a duty the protection of individual or selfish interests. They recognize as just and necessary the restraint and punishment of wrong-doers, and the protection of the rights and interests of the individual in person and property. ”

“ Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. ”

“ Of the first kind are the rights of thinking, speaking, forming and giving opinions, and perhaps are those which can be fully exercised by the individual without the aid of exterior assistance; or in other words, rights of personal competency. Of the second kind are those of personal protection, of acquiring and possessing property, in the exercise of which the individual natural power is less than the natural right. ”

“ There are also such laws for society, constant modes of action, which belong to human nature in its social form. They are also written in the nature of man. The mind and conscience of the individuals who make up the society are the faculties by which these laws likewise are found out. These laws, constant modes of individual or social action, are the sole and exclusive basis of human establishments which help attain the end of individual and social life. What conforms to these natural rights is called right; what conforms not, is wrong. ”

“ Rights can be spoken of only on the condition that a person is thought as a person, that is, as an individual, or, in other words, as occupying a relation to other individuals, between whom and him a community, though not actually posited, perhaps, is at least fictitiously assumed. For those things which, through speculative philosophy, we discovered to be conditions of personality, become rights only if other persons are added in thought, who dare not violate those conditions. ”

“ It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; ”

“ Laws, wisely administered, will secure men in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, whether of mind or body, at a comparatively small personal sacrifice; but no laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy, and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
The Government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it. ”

“ I think that I have said it in your hearing, that I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man's rights; ”

“ To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. ”

“ Conversely, everyone capable of being determined by the conception of a common good as his own ideal good, as that which unconditionally should be (of being in that sense an end to himself) , in other words, every moral person, is capable of rights; i.e. of bearing his part in a society in which the free exercise of his powers is secured to each member through the recognition by each of the others as entitled to the same freedom with himself. ”

“ We demand freedom to establish our affairs in our way, and accord you that right. Take the hand of restraint from us. Give us our natural right to manage our own affairs, and we will respect your equal rights. ”

“ WHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society? ”

“ Having solemnly resolved that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we shut our eyes and waited for the formula to work. ”

“ Reason, truth, justice, respect for fellowmen, the sense of personal dignity which is inseparable from the dignity of others, love of personal freedom and the freedom of all others, the conviction that work is the base and condition for rights--these must be the fundamental principles of all public education. ”

“ In dealing, then, with such phrases as 'jura personarum' and 'personal rights,' we must keep in view the difference between the legal and ethical sense of the proposition that all rights are personal, or subsist as between persons. ”

“ The best that it can do for all, and the only honest thing it can do for any, is simply to secure to each and every one his own rights,—the rights that nature gave him,—his rights of person, and his rights of property; leaving him, then, to pursue his own interests, and secure his own welfare, by the free and full exercise of his own powers of body and mind ”

“ Hence the product of legislation is the law-abiding man, of public opinion the well-conducted man, of personal conviction the conscientious man; each good in his own degree — the first as he is kept from harm, the second as he is pliant to the prevailing custom, the third as he honours his conscience as his king. Thus judged, there is a distinct scale of values — a vital difference of moral worth — in the hierarchy of rights and duties, on account of the sanction they appeal to. ”

“ We hold these rights by virtue, of our manhood, it is said; they are inherent in it, and constitute it. But my rights bind you, and yours bind me, and yet you and I are equal; our manhoods are equal. How, then, can the manhood of either bind or morally oblige the other? ”

“ It proposes to supplant what you have been trained to consider the foundation of your life, of society, of order, and you have been trained to believe that your most precious rights are bound up with that system. ”

“ The virtues are dispositions to exercise positively, in some way contributory to social good, those powers which, because admitting of being so exercised, society should secure to him; the powers which a man has a right to possess, which constitute his rights. ”

“ Out of rights grow duties; the first of which is to live an honest, truthful, self-loyal life, acting and speaking always and everywhere in accordance with the laws of our being, as revealed in our own physical and mental organization. It is by the light of this fact that we must look upon all social requirements, whether in dress, manners, or morals. All that is fundamental and genuine in these will be found to harmonize with universal principles, and consequently with our primary duty in reference to ourselves. ”

“ By personal rights in the above classification are meant rights of life and liberty, i.e. of preserving one's body from the violence of other men, and of using it as an instrument only of one's own will ”

“ In saying that only among 'persons' can there come to be rights, and that every 'person' should have rights, I have been careful to explain that I use 'person' in the moral, not merely in the legal, sense. ”

“ This great law and this great legitimacy are the enjoyment of the natural rights of man, ruled by his duties; for it is the duty that creates the right, and not the right that creates the duty; the passions and the vices relegate us to the class of slaves. ”

“ And this, in order that every man may know what to look upon as his own, what as another’s; what absolute and what relative duties are required at his hands; what is to be esteemed honest, dishonest, or indifferent; what degree every man retains of his natural liberty; what he has given up as the price of the benefits of society; and after what manner each person is to moderate the use and exercise of those rights which the state assigns him, in order to promote and secure the public tranquillity. ”

“ Some of these moral conceptions are that all have common rights, that each owes to all common duties, that there should be no right without duties, and that duties should be proportioned to capabilities. ”

“ Let us put the canon of equality in a different shape, namely, that there should always be a sufficient reason for any difference in the treatment of our fellows. This rule does not imply that I should act in all cases as though all men were equal in character or mind, but that my action should in all cases be justified by some appropriate consideration. ”