Civil Rights Quotes

If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.

~ Harvey Milk

Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment. An honest woman can sell tangerines all day and remain a good person until she dies, but there will always be naysayers who will try to convince you otherwise. Perhaps this woman did not give them something for free, or at a discount. Perhaps too, that she refused to stand with them when they were wrong — or just stood up for something she felt was right. And also, it could be that some bitter women are envious of her, or that she rejected the advances of some very proud men. Always trust your heart. If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to her.

~ Suzy Kassem

Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice.

~ Criss Jami

To cheapen the lives of any group of men, cheapens the lives of all men, even our own. This is a law of human psychology, or human nature. And it will not be repealed by our wishes, nor will it be merciful to our blindness.

~ William Pickens

We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. So however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. No lie can live forever. We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. Truth crushed to earth will rise again. We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.   Yet that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right.  You shall reap what you sow. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children all over this nation - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?

~ Howard Zinn

Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment--that of testing whether or not it was possible for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education institution. I knew that if we failed it wold injure the whole race.

~ Booker T. Washington

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.

~ Arun Gandhi

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.

~ Saaif Alam

People with disabilities should not be considered as unadvataged because they can have high self esteem as others to fulfill their potential. People should be aware that a disability is something that some people can be born with and it is not a choice for them. Therefore, they should be treated with respect and should not be discriminated because this kind of behavior can socially isolate them from being part of the rest of their community.

~ Saaif Alam

Biting the hand that feeds you, that's what you're doing Mary Logan, biting the hand that feeds you.'Again Mama laughed, 'If that's the case, Daisy, I don't think I need that little bit of food.'With the second book finished, she stared at a small pile of second grade books on her desk.'Well, I just think you're spoiling those children, Mary. They've got to learn how things are sometime.''Maybe so,' said Mama. 'But that doesn't mean they have to accept them. And maybe we don't either.

~ Mildred D. Taylor

Unfair prejudice can result people being living with fear and unfair treatment if it is based on physical appearance. Therefore, this conflict should be intervened seriously and violators of this act of hate crime should get punished and understand deeply about the significance of human existence, so they can get pressured to change and act morally.

~ Saaif Alam

If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American -- our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that.

~ Jon Stewart

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

~ Thomas Jefferson

Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological.

~ Suzy Kassem

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

~ Audre Lorde

Prejudice plunges you into a world of fear and hate. That's no way to live.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier — and much, much harder.

~ Suzy Kassem

A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.

~ Sandra Day O'connor

When Hughes writes, in the first two lines of his poem, “Let America be America again/ Let it be the dream it used to be,” he acknowledges that America is primarily a dream, a hope, an aspiration, that may never be fully attainable, but that spurs us to be better, to be larger. He follows this with the repeated counterpoint, “America never was America to me,” and through the rest of this remarkable poem he alternates between the oppressed and the wronged of America, and the great dreams that they have for their country, that can never be extinguished.

~ Harry Belafonte

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

~ Søren Kierkegaard

You have to remember, rights don't come in groups we shouldn't have 'gay rights'; rights come as individuals, and we wouldn't have this major debate going on. It would be behavior that would count, not what person belongs to what group.

~ Ron Paul

The freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose.

~ Mercedes Lackey

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understan

~ Louis D. Brandeis

It is easy to be disgruntled if you are denied rights and freedoms to which you feel entitled. But if you are not coherent, if you cannot put into words what it is that displeases you and why it is unfair and should change, then you are dismissed as an unreasonable whiner. You may be lectured about perseverance and patience, life as a test, the need to accept the higher wisdom of others.

~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga- a belief that we're all connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me- even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer- even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief- I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper- that makes this country work.

~ Barack Obama

Few people understood the exceptional role the civil rights movement had on the white boys and girls of the South. Bill Clinton would never have become who he was without the shining example of Martin Luther King. The same is true of Jimmy Carter and Fritz Hollings and Richard and Joe Riley. Imagine this: you’re a little white kid and you watch firehoses turned on people who don’t seem to be hurting anyone, and fierce dogs being tuned on young men who carry signs about freedom. We white kids grew up watching movies and TV and guess what we had learned to do? We had learned to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

~ Pat Conroy

I am not interested in having freedom from burdens. I don't need any authority to free me from responsibility.I am not interested in having freedoms within an authoritarian's parameters. I am only interested in self-determination.I have only respect for liberty as I am a libertarian.

~ A.e. Samaan

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

~ Tariq Ali

I didn`t change. The Democratic Party slid to the Left from right under me.

~ Charlton Heston

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation of its day, and included women's rights as part of its reforms. Ironically, the section on women's rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens' rights into it, it would never pass. The bill passed anyway, though, much to the chagrin of a certain wiener from Virginia.

~ Adam Selzer

Make noise for justice.Make noise for inclusion.Make noise for empathy.Make noise for our planet.Make noise for civil rights.Make noise for women’s rights.Make noise for compassion.Make noise for LOVE.

~ Scott Stabile

Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people who have no intelligent knowledge of what they condemn?

~ Susan B. Anthony Collection

Get off of my shoulders. The foundation has been laid, now its time for you to build on it and get to work.

~ Amelia Boynton Robinson

[We're] going to change the world. One day they'll write about us. You'll see.

~ Viola Gregg Liuzzo

Gospel music is nothing but singing of good tidings -- spreading the good news. It will last as long as any music because it is sung straight from the human heart.

~ Mahalia Jackson

If not us, then who?If not now, then when?

~ John E. Lewis

If not now, then when?

~ John E. Lewis

Racist legacy laws and modern racist practices are all part of the same system, and it needs to be changed now.

~ Dashanne Stokes