Equal Civil Rights Quotes

The only marches I have ever witnessed under a banner of so-called "Christianity" have been to enforce oppression and incite hatred and intolerance - and to deprive people of their equal civil rights. ~ Christina Engela

Private enterprise manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal. ~ Thomas Jefferson

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement. ~ Kamala Harris

We must insist that free oratory is only the beginning of free speech; it is not the end, but a means to an end. The end is to find the truth. The practical justification of civil liberties is not that self-expression is one of the rights of man. It is that the examination of opinion is one of the
necessities of man. For experience tells us that it is only when freedom of opinion becomes the compulsion to debate that the seed which our fathers planted has produced its fruit. When that is
understood, freedom will be cherished not because it is a vent for our opinions but because it is the surest method of correcting them. ~ Walter Lippmann

We knew no one man had killed the prophet. Rather, the combined weight of racism and an absence of moral courage had crushed him. A constitution ignored, laws denied, these were the weapons. America pulled the trigger. ~ Marita Golden

When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion. ~ William Godwin

You know what Americans are really sensitive to? Issues of fairness. I think this is a modern phenomenon, born of the civil rights movement. Once you convince Americans that something is basically unfair, you've got a winning cause. ~ Gail Collins

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

I guess it's the curse of our generation, having to put aside our lives to do the right thing. ~ Allan Dare Pearce

Marriage is sacred and protected and has nothing to do with violating our civil rights. ~ Jack Kingston

Sometimes in history the name of God has been invoked on behalf of actions and movements that have ennobled the human soul and lifted the body politic to a higher plane. Take the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American civil rights movement, or Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the struggle against South African apartheid, as examples. Other times religious fervor has been employed for the worst kinds of sectarian and violent purposes. The Ku Klux Klan, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and David Koresh's Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas, are frightening examples.

Is there a reliable guide to when we are really hearing the voice of God, or just a self-interested or even quite ungodly voice in the language of heaven? I think there is. Who speaks for God? When the voice of God is invoked on behalf of those who have no voice, it is time to listen. But when the name of God is used to benefit the interests of those who are speaking, it is time to be very careful. ~ Jim Wallis

It was just tiresome thinking about folks having to fight for the least little thing. I loved my people for fighting, but hated the reason why, and that left me with that crosscut notion of pride and anger pulling in different directions, two kinds of muscle fighting for the same piece of bone. ~ Ravi Howard

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

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining ... . We demand this fraud be stopped. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

Remember watching television with your parents? Little House on the Prairie, Beaver Cleaver, Father Knows Best, Brady Bunch, Happy Days, fine white family shows with white Christian morals. You know what I mean? Today, Jews own the media and show shit on TV that's against God - races mixing, inbreeding, faggots raising kids, Jew comedy, a bunch of crap. You can't watch television anymore. I want to see a white, civil society, where white rights count, and there's none of this garbage polluting my children's minds. ~ Mark M. Bello

It was so crucial to the Civil Rights Movement that on June 23, 1963, Martin Luther King came to town, walked down Woodward Avenue with more than 100,000 people and delivered the first major public iteration of his "I Have A Dream" speech, two months before he did it in Washington. ~ David Maraniss

This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation. ~ John Robert Lewis

Let us listen to the lesson of Martin Luther King, who wrote:
"The movement does not seek to liberate blacks at the price of the humiliation of the whites. It wants to liberate American society and to help all people to liberate themselves. ~ Sean B. Carroll

There has been far too much hypocrisy in the field of civil rights. It is easy enough to give rousing speeches or call for legislation which has no possibility of passage. ~ Robert Kennedy

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. ~ Matt Taibbi

Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law. ~ Iris Chang

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. ~ Alma Adams

The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. ~ John Marshall Harlan

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

All civil rights and the right to hold office were to be extended to persons of any Christian denomination. ~ Roger Sherman

While American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

Civil society has not lost the possibility to influence the government and force them to change their policy. That is why we believe in your voice and your help. ~ Lidia Yusupova

A lot of things happened in a lot of places. And to see how well it was handled in Atlanta. There are a lot of reasons for Atlanta being a special town in the Civil Rights era. ~ Ivan Allen

An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why "criminals" have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others. Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category "lawbreakers" is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another. ~ Angela Y. Davis

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

And I've tried to give us a higher profile. Typically, at a board meeting, we'd pass resolutions about the civil-rights issue of the day, but we'd never tell anyone. So I've instituted a policy of announcing our resolutions at the end of our meetings. ~ Julian Bond

Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. ~ John Legend

ISIS BEHEADS CIVILIANS WHILE WORLD KEEPS FORGETTING WHAT VICTIMS' SOULS R BEGGING:
HUMANITY SAVE KOBANE ~ Widad Akreyi

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

Since 2001, the U.S. government has abandoned its role as a champion of human rights and has perpetrated terrible and illegal abuses in prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, sent prisoners secretly to other nations to be tortured, denied the applicability of the Geneva Convention restraints, and severely restricted time-honored civil liberties within our own country. Certain political leaders of other nations, who are inclined to perpetrate human rights abuses to quiet dissenting voices and were previously restrained by positive influence from Washington, now feel free to emulate or exceed the abuses approved by American leaders. ~ Jimmy Carter

Asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable to suppose, that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

They [the founders] proclaimed to all the world the revolutionary doctrine of the divine rights of the common man. That doctrine has ever since been the heart of the American faith. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. ~ John Howard Griffin

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.