Best 292 quotes in «civil rights quotes» category

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 If there are no victims, all affirmative action laws will immediately be repealed.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.

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

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.

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

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

Im a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I would not open windows into men's souls.

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.

Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

One wonders if Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon's administrations may come to be viewed, in the future, as having been underestimated in some respects. To be sure, each ended in failure. Nonetheless, Johnson's accomplishments in civil rights and immigration legislation, and Nixon's in respect to relations with China, may loom larger with the passage of time.

My life is about being a civil rights activist. That's my life. Whoever you are, everyone, we either have civil rights or we don't. It's for everyone.

Newsman are the ones who - without them we don't have a civil rights movement, we don't have a women's movement, we don't have a Vietnam movement.

Okay, so here's my question: When did civility become incompatible with protest? Why do some people consider civility an antonym - anathema, even - to political action and dissent? Because, and I'm raising my voice, it's not. Have we forgotten how Mahatma Gandhi used nonviolent civil disobedience to free India from British rule and inspire civil rights movements worldwide?

Racism has always been able to come up with a scientific veneer.

Private enterprise manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.

Racial prejudices are indication of a disturbed and potentially unstable society.

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone.

Republicans have reached out so much to black Republicans because it's part of our tradition. Blacks have been in this nation longer than most other Americans with the possible exception of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The first blacks in Congress and the first black Governor were all Republicans. It was Republicans who fought the Civil War over slavery and who introduced the Civil Rights legislation over the next hundred years.

Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.

The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance - a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms - A Nation of Finger Pointers.

The advent of the civil rights movement during the 50s and 60s made it very plain crystal clear to me that we had an obligation to do what we could to make real the Constitution of the United States of America.

The black revolt is as palpable in letters as it is in the streets.

Slowly we have lifeted ourselves by our own bootstraps. Step by halting step, we have beat our way back

The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.

The day for the Negro man being a coward is over.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.

The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die

The greatest right of a civilized person is to be left alone, unless he does harm to others or is threatening to do harm to himself.

The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

The failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future.

The merchants will manage [commerce] the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves.

The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.