Civil Rights famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
-- A. J. Liebling -
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
-- Alan Barth -
It was the Democrats who were against civil rights legislation
-- Allen West -
Racism has always been able to come up with a scientific veneer.
-- Andrew Hacker -
Justice is indivisible. You can't decide who gets civil rights and who doesn't.
-- Angela Davis -
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear
-- Aung San Suu Kyi -
Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.
-- Benjamin Jealous -
Any kind of civil rights oppression is wrong.
-- Bryan Cranston -
We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.
-- Clarence Thomas -
We cannot sit around and talk about the beloved community.
-- Cleveland Sellers -
We wanted black power to be all things to all people.
-- Cleveland Sellers -
Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.
-- Derrick Bell -
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.
-- Ella Baker -
We came equals into this world, and equals shall we go out of it.
-- George Mason -
I'm a civil rights attorney. I'm a victim rights attorney.
-- Gloria Allred -
Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.
-- Harry S. Truman -
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.
-- Horace Greeley -
The black revolt is as palpable in letters as it is in the streets.
-- Hoyt W. Fuller -
An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.
-- Hugo Black -
Civil liberties victories never stay won, but must be fought for over and over again.
-- Ira Glasser -
It's not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.
-- Jackie Robinson -
Evil societies always kill their consciences.
-- James L. Farmer, Jr. -
We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs.
-- James L. Farmer, Jr. -
There are a million Negroes in Mississippi. I think they'll take care of me.
-- James Meredith -
The day for the Negro man being a coward is over.
-- James Meredith -
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
-- John Stuart Mill -
Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women.
-- Joss Whedon -
Racial prejudices are indication of a disturbed and potentially unstable society.
-- Kenneth Clark -
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.
-- Lance Morrow -
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Without justice, there can be no peace.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
The failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
In the current struggle, there is one positive course of action. There is no alternative, for the alternative would connote a rear march...
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
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....
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
When I hear someone’s in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-25.
-- Michael Savage -
We have to "walk the walk" not just "talk the talk".
-- Paul Kivel -
We need to talk with each other, honestly, simply, caringly.
-- Paul Kivel -
Slowly we have lifeted ourselves by our own bootstraps. Step by halting step, we have beat our way back
-- Roy Wilkins -
Until civil rights are enjoyed by all of us, we're simply not civilized.
-- Rupert Friend -
It is my hope that the pagan media and academic establishment will implode on the force of its own corruption and stagnation.
-- Samuel Bowers -
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.
-- Samuel Bowers -
The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.
-- Shirley Chisholm -
It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.
-- Tariq Ali -
The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
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.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
I've never been afraid to step out and to reach out and to move out in order to make things happen.
-- Victoria Gray Adams -
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.
-- Victoria Gray Adams -
If you can't find anybody else, then I'll go. So, they couldn't find anybody else. So, I went.
-- Victoria Gray Adams -
As far as I am concerned, freedom summer never really ended.
-- Victoria Gray Adams -
We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.
-- W. Reece Smith, Jr. -
We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.
-- Walter Lippmann -
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
-- William O. Douglas -
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.
-- Emily Raboteau -
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.
-- James M Strock -
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.
-- Marcie Cohen Ferris
