In this dilemma they evolved the theory of natural rights. If 'natural rights' means anything it means that the individual rights are to be determined by the conduct of Nature. But Nature knows nothing about rights in the sense of human conception.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the concept of natural rights and questions their basis in nature itself.
Clarence Darrow critiques the philosophical idea of 'natural rights' by asserting that if these rights stem from nature, they cannot truly hold meaning as nature does not recognize human constructs like rights. He suggests a fundamental disconnect between human legal concepts and the indifferent reality of the natural world.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about the origin of human rights in a philosophy class.
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?
Chase after the truth like all hell.
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
The trouble with law is lawyers.
It's your life - but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else . . . you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.
There are men and women so lonely they believe God, too, is lonely.
I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore.
The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in the American society.
Not a whole lot of us are wrestling somebody for a canned food item in the supermarket or having an ax fight in the jungle clearing. Instead, we sit and think about taxes and the ozone layer.
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