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A compromise is but an act of Congress. It may be overruled at any time. It gives us no security. But the Constitution is stable. It is a rock.

We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property.

Compromise, contrary to popular opinion, does not mean selling out one's principles. Compromise means working out differences to forge a solution which fits the diversity of the body politic.

The fact is, you never compromise on principles. If people on the far Left, they have a principle to stand by, they should never compromise; those of us on the Right should not either.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

The theory of rights enables us to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong and lasting accord between all the elements which compose the nation.

Compromise is not such ignoble and deplorable a thing as we generally think. It is rather an indispensable factor in the political strategy. Any nation that rises against the oppressors is bound to fail in the beginning and to gain partial reforms during the medieval period of its struggle through compromises.

Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, asserted, carried out, and secured by modes of human contrivance.

Look at the Civil Rights Movement. Look at any kind of fight for change. People had to keep fighting and taking their rights. Rights are never given to you. They have to be fought for and they have to be taken.

All our rights are gradually eroded as government gets bigger.