Civil Rights Quotes

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

~ Dashanne Stokes

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

~ Bayard Rustin

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them. If we do none of these, then we should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expresses itself in fear and hate and crime.

~ Richard Wright

How can you ask someone to live in the world and not have something to say about injustice?

~ John Carlos

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the war on terror?

~ Cory Doctorow

According to court records, during the siege at Wounded Knee, more than two hundred and fifty thousand rounds were fired at our people by U.S. marshalls, FBI agents, the tribal police, the GOONs, and white vigilantes. These boys weren't kidding. And neither were we.

~ Leonard Peltier

A tense account of the perils facing those who sought freedom in the lead-up to the Civil War.

~ Publisher’s Weekly

Health is a human necessity, health is a human right

~ James Lenhart

Adoptee rights are everyone's rights, and they deserve to be protected.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Self defense is the inherent right of an individual to repel any unwarranted attack. Governments are not individuals and should not have the power to restrict or invalidate a person's ability to defend him/herself.

~ Gunfreezone.net

A voteless people is a hopeless people.

~ Amelia Boynton Robinson

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

~ Harmon Okinyo

It [freedom] rings bells to remind humanity that the most precious gifts in life––like children and love and time––must never be taken for granted.

~ Aberjhani

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.

~ Bernard Schaffer

Freedom rings bells to wake us from the comfort of beautiful dreams and empower the efforts that turn them into reality.

~ Aberjhani

In its essence, Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is one citizen’s soul-searing plea with his countrymen––Whites and Blacks––to recognize that racial disparities fueled by unwarranted bigotry were crippling America’s ability to shine as a true beacon of democracy in a world filled with people groping their way through suffocating shadows of political turmoil, economic oppression, military mayhem, starvation, and disease.

~ Aberjhani

The unfortunate reality is that, even today, too many citizens have reason to fear that their right to vote, their access to the ballot--and their ability to have their votes counted--is under threat. --Eric Holder, quoted in Give Us the Ballot

~ Ari Berman

If the system were designed to protect adoptees, why do so many have to fight for their rights?

~ Dashanne Stokes

My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist.

~ Joe Biden