Civil Rights Quotes

The Cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.

I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, 'Hey man, we don't go for that anymore.'

Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream." And that's it!

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.

My book has a pre - civil rights setting with a post - civil rights sensibility. I believe less and less that there is something called "The Black Experience," though undoubtedly there was one once.

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

Coming to the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, we begin to have this idea that's still with us today, which is that the main purpose of public education is closing achievement gaps.

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.

That was only the beginning - where one burns books, one will finally also burn people.

I think hip-hop has definitely brought the black experience to white kids more than the civil rights movement did and more than any teacher's well-intentioned lecture on Martin Luther King did.

Jail threats did not dissuade Martin Luther King - and intergenerational justice is a moral issue of comparable magnitude to civil rights.

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

My heart beats red, white, and blue. And with patriotism it aches Generally, I believe in democracy, freedom and civil rights But in particular, cupcakes

It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights.

If you only make fights that you're going to win, there would be no women's vote in America, there would be no civil rights laws in the country.

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

In the current struggle, there is one positive course of action. There is no alternative, for the alternative would connote a rear march.

NEA includes most bizarre & extreme misuse of tax funds.

ACLU has become eccentric and destructive.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

If you can't find anybody else, then I'll go. So, they couldn't find anybody else. So, I went.

We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.

We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era.

[O]ur revolt was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.

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

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

The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Although the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.

Love is a better way.

...the majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former.

Racism is a disease of white people

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into France. They told France, to hell with Fance, they wanted some land, not some France.

Only a "dry as dust" religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an Earthly hell.

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

Privilege is when you contribute to the oppression of others and then claim that you are the one being discriminated against.

Tolerance of intolerance enables oppression.

You're not under attack when others gain rights and privileges you've always had.

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

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

History could not be any clearer: Rights given by fad and fashion are just as easily taken away. The Constitution matters.

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

Trying to erase, hide, discredit, degrade, and suppress a writer's work, merit, voice, and influence―is unconstitutional. Censorship only exists to protect corruption.