Civil-rights Quotes

In not a single one of these little campaigns was I victorious. In other words, in each case, I pers...

a delegate shout out from the floor: “Peonage, Anti-Lynch Bill, poll tax, these are our issues. They...

I feel that for white America to understand the significance of the problem of the Negro will take a...

Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, b...

Our situation is intolerable, but what's worseis to sit here and do nothing.

You have to remember, rights don't come in groups we shouldn't have 'gay rights'; rights come as ind...

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not ...

A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's ci...

Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States...

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

...the majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a differen...

Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth b...

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

The complexity of the so-called individual that’s been praised for decades in America somehow has na...

The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans ...

These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our ...

Freedom rings bells to wake us from the comfort of beautiful dreams and empower the efforts that tur...

In its essence, Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is one citizen’s soul-searing plea ...

It [freedom] rings bells to remind humanity that the most precious gifts in life––like children and ...

The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level...

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily bea...

It is easy to be disgruntled if you are denied rights and freedoms to which you feel entitled. But i...

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga- a belief th...

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

the underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the an...

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

I knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment--that of testing whether or not it was ...

...A vision from a universe where the Equal Rights Amendment--with its redefinition of personhood--i...

I didn`t change. The Democratic Party slid to the Left from right under me.

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "w...

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and ...

When Hughes writes, in the first two lines of his poem, “Let America be America again/ Let it be the...

If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.

Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can supp...

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments ...

I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosex...

My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights a...

From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principl...

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, domina...

The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recog...

Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The de...

If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, b...

[Martin Luther King] said that little black boys and little black girls would be able to join hands ...

I, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,Bu...

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedo...

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there...

The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into ...

A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a c...

Only a "dry as dust" religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the s...

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the su...

May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you ...

We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will ...

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as...

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We...

We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will w...

I was in the kitchen drinking coffee when I heard Coretta cry, "Martin, Martin, come quickly!" I put...

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whis...

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but it...

The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used ...

The freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose.