1866 Civil Rights Quotes

#1. Since Aureliano at that time had very confused notions about the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, his father in law gave him some schematic lessons. The Liberals, he said, were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce, to recognize the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut the country up into a federal system that would take power away from the supereme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities. - Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#2. The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die - Author: Martin Luther King, Jr.

#3. If not us, then who?
If not now, then when? - Author: John E. Lewis

#4. I've never been afraid to step out and to reach out and to move out in order to make things happen. - Author: Victoria Gray Adams

#5. Aren't cops trained to be patient, to use their weapons as a last resort?"
"But this was a white cop, Sarah. And to a white cop, a black man and a gun don't mix. Do you understand where I'm coming from? - Author: Mark M. Bello

#6. To remind him, and perhaps myself, that any hope for the future depends on our ability to reclaim the narrative of a long con- tinuum of resistance that has been the foundation of our country and the bulwark against the very forces that have threatened our democracy since its founding. - Author: Jeff Biggers

#7. A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens. - Author: Sandra Day O'Connor

#8. Right isn't always legal. - Author: J.S.B. Morse

#9. Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results. - Author: Thomas Sowell

#10. I am an American, proud to be an American, proud to be a black American. I'm not African-American. I've never been to Africa. I'm an American that is black and my　– and I'm proud to be a black that submits to my Christianity. I am proud to be just a man. I mean a man's man, not a metro sexual, not one that gets his nails done. I mean a man that used to get out there and knock heads and get his fingernails dirty. I'm proud of being a man, but my manhood submits to my Christianity, but I don't see that in Al Sharpton. Any time anything happens that attacks his blackness, he fears it and　– because he has nothing else to stand on. Thus, when the real civil rights movement of everyone steps up, when we're saying the Tea Party, don't take being discriminated against. If a black person was kicked out of a hotel for being black down in Florida, it would be an uproar, but since the Tea Party was kicked out because of their political views, that's going against America. That's why we're here going against the Constitution, with certain unalienable rights. That is the true fight we must start and we must fight today like never before. - Author: Ken Hutcherson

#11. Leaders who formulate positive ideas and implement effective change in their community can help others overcome difficult economic and social hardships. - Author: Saaif Alam

#12. Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun. - Author: Jean Genet

#13. American civil rights leader, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Lynching is a murder. For the past four hundred years our people have been lynched physically, but now it's done politically. We're lynched politically, we're lynched economically, we're lynched socially, we're lynched in every way that you can imagine. - Author: Malcolm X

#14. Yes, he was a good man, but he was also a black man. And when you're black, being good isn't always enough."
"No, sweetheart, it isn't. A black man walks a different line, a tightrope. Sometimes that line is hard to see. That seems to be what happened here. - Author: Mark M. Bello

#15. The lengths we went to as a society to crush someone of such modest ambitions-Garner's big dream was to someday sit down at work-were awesome to contemplate. What happened to Garner spoke to the increasing desperation of white America to avoid having to even see, much less speak to or live alongside, people like him.
Half a century after the civil rights movement, white Americans do not want to know this man. They don't want him walking in their neighborhoods. they want him moved off the corner. Even white liberals seem to, deep down inside, if the policies they advocate and the individual choices they make are any indication.
The police are blamed for these deaths, and often rightly so, but the highly confrontational, physically threatening strategies cops such as Daniel Pantaleo employ draw their power from the tacit approval of upscale white voters. Whether they admit it or not, many voters would rather that Eric Garner be dead and removed from view somewhere than living and eating Cheetos on the stoop next door. - Author: Matt Taibbi

#16. [T]he full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields.
[Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979)] - Author: United Nations

#17. For liberalism is a delicate thing. It encompasses so much
constitutional government, democratic elections, freedom of worship, civil rights, free trade
that we think of it as timeless and universal. But liberalism came into being in a real place and time, like a flame it has wavered in various eras, and it can be snuffed out. - Author: Russell Shorto

#18. Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -Andrew Young, author, civil rights activist, US congressman, mayor, and UN ambassador (b. 1932) - Author: Andrew Young

#19. Unequal group rights, the politics of redistribution and a Constitution whose meaning varies with changeable coalitions are a recipe for civil war. - Author: Paul Craig Roberts

#20. 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. - Author: Martin Luther King, Jr.

#21. Our history, America's history, has been so heavily edited. In history classes, we don't really go into full discussions about the past. People, struggles, and triumphs have been erased. As a result, we now have a generation, my generation, of people who are intelligent but ignorant of and blind to the truth. - Author: Janelle Gray

#22. Shout out to the noisemakers. Our world needs your voices.

Make noise for justice.
Make noise for inclusion.
Make noise for empathy.
Make noise for our planet.
Make noise for civil rights.
Make noise for women's rights.
Make noise for compassion.
Make noise for LOVE. - Author: Scott Stabile

#23. Talking frankly about race may make white people uncomfortable. Taking a stand to demonstrate the impact of race on law enforcement is difficult. Look what happened when a National Football League star, protesting discrimination, decided to kneel during the national anthem. Some understood the protest and the right to peacefully demonstrate pursuant to the First Amendment to our Constitution. Others have used the protest to divide us further and rally the white supremacist elements of their constituency. Yes, I am speaking to you, Mr. President, the principal antagonist of racial harmony. - Author: Mark M. Bello

#24. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope - that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow. - Author: Aberjhani

#25. The rise of the antiwar and civil rights movements, along with the emergence of radical groups such as the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and the American Indian movement, saw a return to systematized abuse within the prison system. - Author: Chris Hedges

#26. The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals. - Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

#27. Of all weapons, love is the most deadly and devastating, and few there be who dare trust their fate in its hands. - Author: Howard Thurman

#28. It's time for Congress to act, restore the Voting Rights Act, and take action to prevent voter disenfranchisem ent. As your next Congresswoman, I will stand up to the extremists in the Republican Party to ensure civil rights are protected for everyone. - Author: Alma Adams

#29. The only compensation, gained through the influence of nongovernmental organizations, consisted in slightly broadening for private individuals the possibility of access and appeal to the agencies enforcing the Covenant concerned with civil and political rights. - Author: Rene Cassin

#30. The story of America is one that is still being written. Many of the ideological battles we like to think we've tucked neatly into a folder called "the past" -issues of race, class, gender, sexual identity, civil rights, justice, and just what makes us "American" -are very much alive today. For what we do not study and reflect upon, we are in danger of dismissing or forgetting. What we forget, we are often doomed to repeat. Our ghost, it seems, are always with us, whispering that attention must be paid. - Author: Libba Bray