We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act... about the illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because and I am not making this up he had a pet cat.
Through the years I have received my share of recognition for efforts in the fields of sports the arts the struggle for full citizenship for the Negro people labor's rights and the fight for peace.
Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.
We remain at peace with all nations and no efforts on my part consistent with the preservation of our rights and the honor of the country shall be spared to maintain a position so consonant to our institutions.
God willing we shall come to a stage where the world looks at the Palestinian question and Palestinian rights on Palestinian national soil as well as the questions of the occupied Syrian and Lebanese territories. These are the bases on which peace will be built.
The United Nations will be at the heart of our international activities. France will assume its full responsibilities at the Security Council by putting its status at the service of peace respect for human rights and development.
I feel that my father's greatest legacy was the people he inspired to get involved in public service and their communities to join the Peace Corps to go into space. And really that generation transformed this country in civil rights social justice the economy and everything.
Today we have two Vietnams side by side North and South exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam but they are living side by side.
Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as our prince of peace of civil rights. We owe him something major that will keep his memory alive.
America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.
America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.
If a person is homosexual by nature - that is if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.
Men speak of natural rights but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased.
It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.
Men their rights and nothing more women their rights and nothing less.
We all fight over what the label 'feminism' means but for me it's about empowerment. It's not about being more powerful than men - it's about having equal rights with protection support justice. It's about very basic things. It's not a badge like a fashion item.