Best 292 quotes in «civil rights quotes» category

When people are forced to respect civil rights and human rights or face legal consequences, they don't like it. Civil rights laws will be scrupulously observed only when people accept that it is morally wrong to oppress or discriminate against fellow human beings. That awareness can come only through education. A law will enable integration in public places, but it does not foster understanding or appreciation in the hearts of people who continue to live with their prejudices.

When people have a controversial opinion about an event or a prominent figure, it can significantly increase conflicts of interests that can result people to be socially excluded who don't share the same perspective as them. The way people can end conflicts of interests is to negotiate their conflicting views and unite in order to establish tranquility.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

White privilege is a manipulative, suffocating blanket of power that envelops everything we know...It's brutal and oppressive, bullying you into not speaking up for fear of losing your loved ones, or job, or flat. It scares you into silencing yourself: you don't get the privilege of speaking honestly about your feelings without extensively assessing the consequences...challenging it can have implications on your quality of life.

When we hide discrimination under the guise of 'religious freedom,' we make a mockery of human rights.

Why do we apologize for advocating for ourselves? Why do we apologize for taking up space that we are entitled to? Why do we apologize for thinking and speaking and being?

Why petition Parliament, at all, to do that for us, which, were they ever so well disposed, we can do more speedily and more effectively for ourselves.

You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. […] Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don't be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.

You can either have individual liberty, or dependence on the government. One is designed to undo the other.

You can't get around what's right, though," he said. "When we stop loving them, that's when they win.

Wir sind das Volk!" Dieser Satz hat uns gelehrt, dass wir, wenn wir unserer Sehnsucht glauben und ihr vertrauen, die Angst verlieren können. Eine Angst, die willfährige Dienerin jeder Art von nicht legitimierter Herrschaft ist, die uns ohnmächtig macht, die uns bindet. In dem Augenblick aber, in dem wir unsere Angst als Angst benennen und Anpassung und Angst als Geschwisterkinder erkennen, sind wir möglicherweise bereit zu erproben: Können wir auch ohne sie leben? In genau diesem Augenblick wachsen uns jene Kräfte zu, die eine ganze Gesellschaft verändern können.

You don't have to stand up for your rights to get justice, sometimes you can sit for your rights like Rosa Parks.

You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.

Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins.

You cannot stand for civil rights + not support gay marriage. You cannot stand for human rights + not support gay marriage. It's that simple. Everywhere, the voice of the oppressed must echo + ring out or else it will be crushed by the tyranny of wickedness.

[A.J. Muste] was very influenced - in - influential in the peace movement, in the civil rights movement.

ACLU has become eccentric and destructive.

Any kind of civil rights oppression is wrong.

You're not under attack when others gain rights and privileges you've always had.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

Being able to laugh got me through.

Evil must be attacked by. . . the day to day assault of the battering rams of justice.

As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.

Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.

As far as I am concerned, freedom summer never really ended.

I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I am not, in fact, a superhero. Just a humble, mild-mannered civil rights attorney.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

If Barack Obama believes there are no victims in U.S, then I assume he'll shut down all the civil rights offices throughout the federal government, starting with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. If there are no victims, all affirmative action laws will immediately be repealed. Same thing for equity in pay.

If I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans.

Food is an important lens onto the civil rights movement. One of the central issues of the movement was the right to eat in places that served the public. This battle led to the lunch counter sit-ins, which became embattled, contested places.

I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.

Im a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

I'm a civil rights attorney. I'm a victim rights attorney.

In cultural history, the civil rights movement came before the women's movement.

I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.

If I was an exceptional human being in Detroit, then I saw no reason why I couldn't be an exceptional human being in Mississippi. In Hattiesburg.

I think it's really crucial to leave our American context, not only for a sense of individual freedom, but also to make links to international struggles for civil rights.

In this Revolution, no plans have been written for retreat. Those who will not get into step will find that the parade has passed them by.

I think that civil rights issues take a lot of time to develop.

I think I came here as a priest... The priest is more concerned with heresy than with sin; sins can be forgiven; heresy must be eliminated.

It's time for us as a country to try to come together in ways that freedom was really meant to be.

It is my hope that the pagan media and academic establishment will implode on the force of its own corruption and stagnation.

It was the Democrats who were against civil rights legislation

I've never been afraid to step out and to reach out and to move out in order to make things happen.

I would not open windows into men's souls.

It's not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.

I was involved in the civil rights movement way back in the late '50s and through the '60s and '70s. I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience. Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena.

Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

Liberals say this over and over and over again to hide the actual history, which is why I go through the specifics on the big segregationists in the United States Senate, the ones who signed the Southern Manifesto and the ones who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. There's a panoply of issues to consider. The first time they objected to the Federal government doing something was when it came to civil rights legislation. This is in stark contrast to the very few Republicans who voted against the '64 Civil Rights Act.