Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Quotes

Contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty. ~ Ron Paul

Race to race, the Republicans are putting up candidates that are quite far out of the mainstream in terms of should we have passed the Civil Rights Act or does Social Security need to exist. ~ Tim Kaine

I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ~ Ronald Reagan

We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964. ~ Clarence Thomas

[Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964], many governments in southern states forced people to segregate by race. Civil rights advocates fought to repeal these state laws, but failed. So they appealed to the federal government, which responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But this federal law didn't simply repeal state laws compelling segregation. It also prohibited voluntary segregation. What had been mandatory became forbidden. Neither before nor after the Civil Rights Act were people free to make their own decisions about who they associated with. ~ Harry Browne

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. ~ Thomas Sowell

Has racial justice improved? Have we moved on from Reconstruction and Jim Crow? Been lifted by Martin and the Civil Rights Act of 1964? It seems that whenever we take two steps forward, we take a step back . . . ~ Mark M. Bello

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. ~ Aberjhani

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society. ~ Aberjhani

I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years. [Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan] ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

When I was at 'Newsweek' magazine - which, you know, this really sounds like I walked four miles in the snow to school - but I started at 'Newsweek' magazine in 1963, which was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So it was actually legal to discriminate against women, and 'Newsweek' did. ~ Ellen Goodman

The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will. ~ Antonin Scalia

Even with a Democratic president behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a far larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for it. Eminent Democratic luminaries voted against it, including Senators Ernest Hollings, Richard Russell, Sam Ervin, Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright (Bill Clinton's mentor) and of course, Robert Byrd. Overall, 82 percent of Senate Republicans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, compared to only 66 percent of Democrats. In the House, 80 percent of Republicans voted for it, while only 63 percent of Democrats did.
Crediting Democrats for finally coming on board with Republicans civil rights policies by supporting the 1964 act would be nearly as absurd as giving the Democrats all the glory for Regan's 1981 tax cuts - which passed with the support of 99 percent of Republicans but only 29 percent of Democrats. ~ Ann Coulter

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation of its day, and included women's rights as part of its reforms. Ironically, the section on women's rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens' rights into it, it would never pass. The bill passed anyway, though, much to the chagrin of a certain wiener from Virginia. ~ Adam Selzer

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America. ~ Douglas Wilder

When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him. ~ Bayard Rustin

Mrs. Parks' act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country. ~ Kendrick Meek

Quotas are a perfectly logical, if diabolical, extension of the regulation of private property courtesy of the Civil Rights Act, whereby in an attempt to shape American society in politically pleasing ways, people have been coerced into liking, hiring or renting against their will or better judgment. ~ Ilana Mercer

I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly. ~ Dick Gephardt

In the case of Tunisia, it was indeed this single act that sparked what had been long-standing active protest movements and moved them forward. But that's not so unusual. Let's look at our own history. Take the civil rights movement. There had been plenty of concern and activism about violent repression of blacks in the South, and it took a couple of students sitting in at a lunch counter to really set it off. Small acts can make a big difference when there is a background of concern, understanding, and preliminary activism. ~ Noam Chomsky

If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American
our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that. ~ Jon Stewart

Frederick Douglass called Republicans the 'Party of freedom and progress,' and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process of law. The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill. ~ Elbert Guillory

Well, there's 10 - there's 10 different - there's 10 different titles, you know, to the Civil Rights Act, and nine out of 10 deal with public institutions and I'm absolutely in favor of. One deals with private institutions, and had I been around, I would have tried to modify that. ~ Rand Paul

Legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Through Jimi Hendrix's music you can almost see the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Junior, the beginnings of the Berlin Wall, Yuri Gagarin in space, Fidel Castro and Cuba, the debut of Spiderman, Martin Luther King Junior's 'I Have a Dream' speech, Ford Mustang cars, anti-Vietnam protests, Mary Quant designing the mini-skirt, Indira Gandhi becoming the Prime Minister of India, four black students sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina, President Johnson pushing the Civil Rights Act, flower children growing their hair long and practicing free love, USA-funded IRA blowing up innocent civilians on the streets and in the pubs of Great Britain, Napalm bombs being dropped on the lush and carpeted fields of Vietnam, a youth-driven cultural revolution in Swinging London, police using tear gas and billy-clubs to break up protests in Chicago, Mods and Rockers battling on Brighton Beach, Native Americans given the right to vote in their own country, the United Kingdom abolishing the death penalty, and the charismatic Argentinean Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. It's all in Jimi's absurd and delirious guitar riffs. ~ Karl Wiggins

We want trumpets that sound like thunder, and men to act as though they were going to war with those corrupt and degrading principles that rob one of all rights, merely because he is ignorant, and of a little different color. Let us have principles that will give every one his due; and then shall wars cease, and the weary find rest. ~ William Apess

We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue is not an Ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our nation in the ideological struggle with communism. The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Patriot Act is certainly a concern; all of those things are dangerous. I think more important than me preaching is that we as a nation have to have the debate. I don't know what the answers are. I just know that if the idea is to say talking about it makes you unpatriotic, I've got to call your bluff on that. ~ George Clooney

During the height of the government enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, some segregated townships filled in their municipal pools rather than let nonwhite kids share in the perverse joy of peeing in the water. ~ Paul Beatty

This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country. So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife - I urge every American - to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people, and to bring peace to our land. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass. [Said to Senator John Stennis (D-MS) during debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1957] ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Thus these three amendments to the Constitution [13th, 14th, 15th] were ratified while the ten Southern states were under martial law, and "had no law at all." The Force Acts, the four Reconstruction Acts, and the Civil Rights Act were all passed by Congress while the Southern states were not allowed to hold free elections, and all voters were under close supervision by federal troops. Even Soviet Russia has never staged such mockeries of the election procedures. ~ Eustace Mullins

It is difficult to picture the rich, hard-nosed advisors of James I being overly concerned about the rights of vagabonds and felons. But this was a period that was especially suspicious of arbitrary acts by the Crown against individuals. There was no law enabling the crown to exile anyone, including the baser convict, into forced labour. According to legal scholars, the Magna Carta itself protected even them. The Privy Councillors therefore dressed up what was to befall the convicts and presented the decree authorising their transportation as an act of royal mercy. The convicts were to be reprieved from death in exchange for accepting transportation. (71-71) ~ Don Jordan

Thirty-six House incumbents with ratings from the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education of seventy-five or higher were defeated - especially traumatic since Republicans had filibustered labor's fondest legislative wish: a repeal of the right-to-work provision of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Union members voted for politicians who weakened their unions because the Democrats supported civil rights. ~ Rick Perlstein

These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again. [Said to Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA) regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957] ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Books have played a role in almost every one of the world's great civil and human rights movements, but only because people who read them decided to act. Reading brings with it responsibility. ~ Will Schwalbe

Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts. ~ Roger Wicker

The House adjourned without voting on the bill, but the following year a similar bill - mandating equality in hotels and restaurants open to the public, in transportation facilities, in theaters and other public amusements and in the selection of juries - passed both chambers. The measure reached the White House about the time the two sides in Louisiana cobbled a compromise that allowed Grant to withdraw Sheridan and most of the federal troops. On March 1, 1875, the president signed the Civil Rights Act, the most ambitious affirmation of racial equality in American history until then (a distinction it would retain until the 1960s). ~ H.W. Brands

Rioting is not a movement. It is not an act of civil disobedience. I think it is a mistake for people to consider disorganized action, mayhem, and attacks on other people and property as an extension of any kind of movement. It is not. It is simply an explosion of emotion. That's all. There is nothing constructive about it. It is destructive. ~ John Lewis

The truth is that the hard-fought victories of the Civil Rights Movement caused a reaction that stripped Brown of its power, severed the jugular of the Voting Rights Act, closed off access to higher education, poured crack cocaine into the inner cities, and locked up more black men proportionally than even apartheid-era South Africa. ~ Carol Anderson

Our First Amendment rights are not given to us by the government but are rights we inherently possess. The government cannot use subsequent amendments to limit First Amendment rights. The Free Exercise Clause is both an individual and a collective liberty protecting a right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. Therefore, we strongly support the freedom of Americans to act in accordance with their religious beliefs, not only in their houses of worship, but also in their everyday lives. ~ Republican Party

My evanescent anarchistic tendencies are purely classical. I use the word anarchist in the sense in which it was understood by the ancient Greeks. They, of course, accepted the anarchist as a fairly respectable--if somewhat vehement--opponent of government encroachment on the individual's rights to think and act freely. It is in this sense that I glimpse myself as an anarchist--regretting the growth of government and the ever-increasing trend toward regulation and, worst of all, standardization of human activity. ~ J. Paul Getty

Solidarity is learned through 'contact' rather than 'concepts.' Students in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed. ~ Peter Hans Kolvenbach

[The] prevailing reason at this time is, that the Act of Parliament is against the Magna Charta, and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void. ~ Thomas Hutchinson

Where conflicts arise between workers and bosses, between the rights of one class and the interests of the other, the machinery of the law is typically used as a weapon against the workers. Even where the law is contrary to the demands of powerful corporations, the police often act not from principle or legal obligation, but according to the needs of the ruling class. This tendency shouldn't surprise us, if we remember the lengths to which the cops have gone in the defense of White supremacy, even as laws and policies have changed. With class, as with race, it is the status quo that the police act to preserve and the interests of the powerful that they seek to defend, not the rule of law or public safety. The law, in fact, has been a rather weak guide for those who are meant to enforce it. ~ Kristian Williams

Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done. ~ Elijah Cummings

I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away. ~ Penn Jillette

The act of taking my own life is not something that I do without a lot of thought. I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and to a place where there is no self, only calm. Love always, Wendy. ~ Wendy O. Williams

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture. ~ William Blackstone

The act of living is a revolutionary right. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Christian feminists insist that patriarchal Christianity's denial of women's humanity, its disrespect for their human rights, and its idealizing of women's powerlessness is far from accidental. This system of male control naturalizes dominant-subordinate relationships for the purpose of legitimating male supremacy. Its continuation depends, to a great extent, on the compliance of women and men to its norms and ideological assumptions about gender. When gender conformity and compliance to racist patriarchal norms break down, patriarchy turns violent, especially when women display autonomous self-direction and "when we women live and act as full and adequate persons in our own right." As [Beverly] Harrison explains: It is never the mere presence of a women nor the image of women, nor fear of 'femininity,' that is the heart of misogyny. The core of misogyny, which has yet to be broken or even touched, is the reaction that occurs when women's concrete power is manifest. ~ Marvin M. Ellison

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other. ~ Marquis De Sade

Let your eyes see what they see, not what others want you to see. Let your ears hear what they naturally hear, not what others want you to hear. Let your mouth speak your mind freely and not be constrained by other people's approval or disapproval. Let your mind think what it wants to think and not let other people's demands dictate your thoughts. If your senses and your mind are not allowed to do what they want to do naturally, you are denying them their rights. When you cannot think, sense, feel, or act freely, then your body and mind are injured. Break these oppressions, and you will cultivate life. ~ Liezi

No one questions the validity, the urgency, the essentiality of the Voting Rights Act. ~ Anthony Kennedy

Oh, of course, there is another meaning, another interesting interpretation of the word 'father,' which insists that my father, though a monster, though a villain to his children, is still my father simply because he begot me. But this meaning is, so to speak, a mystical one, which I do not understand with my reason, but can only accept by faith, or, more precisely, on faith, like many other things that I do not understand, but that religion nonetheless tells me to believe. But in that case let it remain outside the sphere of real life. While within the sphere of real life, which not only has its rights, but itself imposes great obligations--within this sphere, if we wish to be humane, to be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions that are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. Then, then it will be a real Christian deed, not only a mystical one, but a sensible and truly philanthropic deed...let us decide the question as reason and the love of man dictate, and not as dictated by mystical notions. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A man may act as his conscience dictates so long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others. That is the spirit of true democracy, and all government by the Priesthood should be actuated by that same high motive. ~ David O. McKay

This stunning act of humble love resulted not from Jesus's forgetting who he was but from remembering who he was. This was the holy mission of the Son Savior. He had to be willing to enter the lowest human condition, to do the most debased thing, and to let go of his rights of position in order that we might be redeemed. It was a high and holy calling, and it was the only way. ~ Paul David Tripp

The Sherman Act is similar in the economics sphere to the Bill of Rights in the personal sphere. ~ Harold H. Greene

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act - and if necessary, to suffer and die - for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied. ~ Haile Selassie

Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights. ~ Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn