natural rights

in a sentence

It had been drawn up by George Mason, who wrote that "all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights ....among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty."†  (source) David McCullough, John Adams, 2002

The individual feels more than ever dependent on society, but he feels this dependence not in the positive sense, cradled, connected as part of an organic whole; he sees it as a threat to his natural rights, and even his economic existence.†  (source) Jay Allison, et al., This I Believe, 2007

To take it away would be a violation of its natural right to live.†  (source) Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, 1991

Yet she was maddened by the thought he had even the right to appeal; her greatest anger was directed against the sentimentalists and theoreticians, whom she thought of as "They"—the lawmakers and the Civil Service—who interfered with the natural right of a white farmer to treat his labor as he pleased.†  (source) Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing, 1950

They were in fact, exercising their natural rights to extricate themselves from illegal kidnapping.†  (source) Alexs Pate, Amistad, 1997

And my right to make that is simply the universal right of a man to enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously placed in a false position.†  (source) Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, 1905

Bring them to a state where saying I want' is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission.†  (source) Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, 1943

The people must cede some of their natural rights to the government to give it some powers.†  (source) James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, & John Jay, The Federalist Papers -- Modern English Edition 2, 2008

Publicity is a noble, beneficent, and universal right.†  (source) Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, 1900

C. We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one.†  (source) T. H. White, The Once and Future King, 1939

Not that Alvin could talk about natural rights and such out loud.†  (source) Orson Scott Card, Red Prophet, 1988

And Swann was happy in spite of everything in feeling that if he, alone among mortals, had not the right to go to Pierrefonds that day, it was because he was in fact, for Odette, some one who differed from all other mortals, her lover; and because that restriction which for him alone was set upon the universal right to travel freely where one would, was but one of the many forms of that slavery, that love which was so dear to him.†  (source) Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, 1913

Those words had been spoken in fluent German, however, and in a more definite tone; these now were halting and in broken German, a language to which she had no natural right, but was merely borrowing—just as Hans Castorp had heard her do a few times before, listening each time with a sense of superiority that was simultaneously cradled in humble delight.†  (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924