Best 292 quotes in «civil rights quotes» category

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

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.

I would not open windows into men's souls.

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.

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.

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.

It was the Democrats who were against civil rights legislation

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 day for the Negro man being a coward is over.

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

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

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

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 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 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 minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.

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

There was no miracle that night.

There are no 'white' or 'coloured' signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.

The prison guards are capable of committing daily atrocities and obscenities, smiling the smile of the angels all the while.

Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor.

Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable.

Under the privilege of the First Amendment many, many ridiculous things are said.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

We wanted black power to be all things to all people.

We don't go for segregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy; you control your own politics; you control your own society; you control your own everything.

We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs.

When people are forced to interact to survive, their prejudices diminish.