Browsing Topic Best Civil Rights Quotes

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.

Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.

I never intend to adjust myself to injustice.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

What really matters is not whether we have problems, but how we go through them. We must keep going on to make it through whatever we are facing.

Their appetite is the same. Their motives are the same. It’s only their mannerisms and methods that differ.

Justice is indivisible. You can’t decide who gets civil rights and who doesn’t.

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

We are here today because we are tired. We are tired of being seared in the withering flames of injustice.

If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

I knew someone had to take the first step. So I made up my mind not to move.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

LISTEN: If you ever wondered what you would do if you were alive in the Civil Rights Movement, NOW IS THE TIME to find out. NOW. RIGHT NOW.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

…this bill will require the creation of a Federal police force of mammoth proportions. It also bids fair to result in the development of an ‘informer’ psychology in great areas of our national life-neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, business spying on businessmen-were those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force an ‘informer’ psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society.

I do think it’s extremely important to acknowledge the gains that were made by the civil rights movement, the black power movement.Institutional transformations happened directly as a result of the movements that people, unnamed people, organized and gave their lives to.

In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.

There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.

Anyone who said he wasn’t afraid during the civil rights movement was either a liar or without imagination. I was scared all the time. My hands didn’t shake but inside I was shaking.

Evil societies always kill their consciences.

Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms…. If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.

There’s no question that the black middle class has benefited greatly by the civil rights movement. But there is a large black underclass that does not have access to jobs. If there’s no clear road to income and status except crime, we should expect social problems. You can’t solve this problem without addressing the economic issues, and the same is true with gender.

Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That’s what I’ve been doing all my life.

The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important ’cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.

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.