Civil Rights Quotes

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

"Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfil themselves."

"If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner."

Nelson Mandela Photo
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"Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated."

"If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness."

"Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple."
Where Do We Go From Here 1967.

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity."
Strength to Love, 1963

Martin Luther King Jr. Poster
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"Segregation is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality."

"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.
'Strength to Love,' 1963

"Whatever career you may choose for yourself - doctor, lawyer, teacher - let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in."

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, 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!'

Freedom March During Civil Rights Rally, with View of Washington Memorial Monument in the Bkgrd Photographic Print
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"The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the coloured man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down."

" I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough." Referring to Dwight Eisenhower's call for patience regarding the progress of civil rights 19th May 1958."

"A child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi ... has the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

Thurgood Marshall
1908 - 1993
won Brown vs Board of Education that ended segregation in public schools
first black Supreme Court Justice

Portrait of US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in His Chambers Premium Photographic Print

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"How could they say that my religion, Islam was a 'race hate' religion after all the plunder and enslavement and domination of my people by white Christians in the name of white supremacy?"

The Greatest:
My Own Story

"The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute."

"Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education."

"As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge."

Julian Bond
(1940-)
African-American Civil Rights Leader
2002 National Freedom Award

"Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.."

lyrics from the song by the same name released in 1973. written by Bob Marley & Peter Tosh.

"I may not agree with what you say, but to your death I will defend your right to say it."

"It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster."

Voltaire
French Author & Philosopher
1694 - 1778
Outspoken critic of government, religious intolerance and persecution

"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing."

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."

"When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking, or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more."

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have... a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers"

"There are those who say to you - we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late."

Speech at Democrat National Convention,
14th July 1948.
Hubert Humphrey

"The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,"

Speech at Democrat National Convention,
14th July 1948.

"There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free."

"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights." ~Bishop Desmond Tutu,

"For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too."

"Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity."

Bishop Desmond Tutu
1931 -
Anti-apartheid activist
South African cleric
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient

"It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home."
~Carl T. Rowan

Carl Rowan
1925 - 2000
writer, journalist, outspoken civil rights activist

"The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with."

"Most people think civil rights today is about "whether or not I'm turning down somebody at the door because he is black or female." It doesn't happen that way anymore. It is more subtle. It happens when women are asked at a job interview, "Do you intend to get pregnant within the next two years?" And it happens to women much more than it happens to blacks, because blacks have spent more than 300 years trying to educate the country about how perverse it all is."

Eleanor Holmes Norton:
currently 10th term Congresswoman from the District of Columbia
first woman to chair the EEOC
civil rights leader and law professor

The Problem We All Live With Giclee Print

Rockwell, Norman

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"I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people."

"I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear."

"Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others."

Rosa Parks Poster

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Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.

Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.

All I was doing was trying to get home from work.