Selma Quotes

When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Having the children you want, not having the children you don't want but in order to do that you have to have the right to abortion and the right to pay equity, those two give you choice. One or the other does not. ~ Selma James

Let's be grateful to all those who came in before us. Grateful to all those men and women, young and old alike, who paved the path forward for us, brick by brick. To those men and women who marched across the bridge in Selma on that great day, those men and women who rallied behind the Gandhis and the Mandelas every single time they were needed, to those men and women who stood up for voting rights and civil rights and gay rights and equality and justice and a free world, those men and women who invented the future by inventing things that fundamentally changed the world from the electricity to vaccinations, from airplanes to birth control pills, from the printing press to the internet. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

Nothing on earth can make up for the loss of one who has loved you. ~ Selma Lagerlof

In high school I would mess with my hair and makeup all the time. ~ Selma Blair

My sister, I have a sister who's 12 years older, she was always the party girl, the outrageous one. ~ Selma Blair

More die in flight than in battle. ~ Selma Lagerlof

Or if this did not help, one stormy night I would let the fire approach the buckling wooden walls and let it ravage everything, so that people might no longer be enticed to dwell in this home of misfortune. Then no one would be able to enter this doomed place, only the church steeple's black jackdaws would found a colony in the large chimney, rising, blackened and eerie, over the desolate ground.
Yet I would surely be anxious when I saw the flames intertwined over the roof, when thick smoke, reddened by the firelight and interspersed with sparks, poured forth out of the old count's estate. In the crackling and sighing I would think I heard the lament of homeless people; at the blue tips of the flames I would think I saw disturbed phantasms hovering. I would think about how sorrow beautifies, how misfortune adorns, and weep, as if a temple to old gods had been doomed to disintegration. ~ Selma Lagerlof

What would have become of me if no one had wanted to read my books? And don't forget all those who have written of me. ~ Selma Lagerlof

I think Vegas is the answer for pregnant people because of insomnia. It's open all the time and you go down and play your silly slots. ~ Selma Blair

No one is able to enjoy such feast than the one who throws a party in his own mind. ~ Selma Lagerlof

If I get married, it's something you really have to work at. It's hard enough to work at having a relationship with best friends and girls that are in the business. ~ Selma Blair

It is not a good omen to meet a lot of cats when one sets out on a journey, so the Lieutenant spat three times for each cat, as his mother had taught him to do ... ~ Selma Lagerlof

We must remember when we speak of the "negativism" of the toddler that this is also the child who is intoxicated with the discoveries of the second year, a joyful child who is firmly bound to his parents and his new-found world through ties of love. The so-called negativism is one of the aspects of this development, but under ordinary circumstances it does not become anarchy. It's a kind of declaration of independence, but there is no intention to unseat the government. ~ Selma Fraiberg

Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents' verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself ... We don't speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language. ~ Selma Fraiberg

The ways of Providence cannot be reasoned out by the finite mind ... I cannot fathom them, yet seeking to know them is the most satisfying thing in all the world. ~ Selma Lagerlof

We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the "blocking" techniques, the outright prohibitions, the "no's" and go heavy on "substitution" techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions. ~ Selma Fraiberg

We can't just run away. It's our land. Our people. We have a duty. ~ Selma Dabbagh

Women can do nothing that has permanence. ~ Selma Lagerlof

I can't afford security. I can't afford a gated house. So, I feel a little vulnerable. I wish some laws would come into play. ~ Selma Blair

Jason Lee made me laugh all the time because he's so big, and I love how goofy bodies can be. ~ Selma Blair

For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively ... ~ Selma Fraiberg

Here, no mercy is shown. One hates one's fellow man to the glory of God. ~ Selma Lagerlof

He could never go back to that place, it had been sealed off to him for ever, blown to the sky with explosives then flattened to the ground with bulldozers, built over with tarmac, lived on top of by other people. ~ Selma Dabbagh

Never repeat a rumor before you have verified it. And if it is true, hold your tongue all the more. ~ Selma Lagerlof

A method of child-rearing is not
or should not be
a whim, a fashion or a shibboleth. It should derive from an understanding of the developing child, of his physical and mental equipment at any given stage, and, therefore, his readiness at any given stage to adapt, to learn, to regulate his behavior according to parental expectations. ~ Selma Fraiberg

I thought of my father and felt a deep sorrow that he should no longer be alive, and that I could not go to him and tell him that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize. I knew that no one would have been happier than he to hear this. ~ Selma Lagerlof

My mother dressed me always very conservatively. ~ Selma Blair

John Lewis is such a remarkable human being. Literally, such a beautiful human being. I remember the first time I met him. We were in the middle of a scene and [Selma director] Ava DuVernay calls, "Cut," and then he literally just came in. He just came walking in.I just froze. I can't explain the feeling. Seeing somebody who was literally a living hero. He was a hero. ~ Stephan James

The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will laterserve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience. ~ Selma Fraiberg

For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions. ~ Coretta Scott King

While shooting 'Selma,' I would train on my off time with the assistant men's track and field coach at Georgia Tech. ~ Stephan James

I go from being hugely hopeful and entertaining to ... really not. I'm not manic depressive, but I can really go to the darker side. ~ Selma Blair

The Black Power advocates are disenchanted with the inconsistencies in the militaristic posture of our government. Over the past decade they have seen America applauding nonviolence whenever the Negroes have practiced it. They have watched it being praised in the sit-in movements of 1960, in the Freedom Riots of 1961, in the Albany movement of 1962, in the Birmingham movement of 1963 and in the Selma movement of 1965. But then these same black young men and women have watched as America sends black young men to burn Vietnamese with napalm, to slaughter men, women, and children; and they wonder what kind of nation it is that applauds nonviolence whenever Negroes face white people in the streets of the United State but then applauds violence and burning and death when these same Negroes are sent to the fields of Vietnam. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

People forget that many of the aspects of the Selma campaign were laid out in response to the church bombing in Birmingham. ~ Andrew Aydin

The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely. ~ Selma Fraiberg

My first crush was Spock. I thought it didn't get any better than Spock. ~ Selma Blair

The courage of federal Judge Frank Johnson is well-known.He was the one that gave the legal authority for the right to march from Selma to Montgomery, and he suffered dearly for it. He was ostracized and rejected. His life was threatened as a result of it. ~ Dick Durbin

If dead things love, if earth and water distinguish friends from enemies, I should like to possess their love. I should like the green earth not to feel my step as a heavy burden. I should like her to forgive that she for my sake is wounded by plough and harrow, and willingly to open for my dead body. ~ Selma Lagerlof

The only time he cries is if he's hungry. We all have nipples. I don't care who I offend; my baby wants to eat. If I can't get a cover over me quick enough, so be it. ~ Selma Blair

Selma stood. "You can put a tuxedo on a goat, but it's still a goat."
"No, it's not," Bulahdeen said. "It's a completely different goat when you put a tuxedo on it. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

Mental health depends upon the maintenance of a balance within the personality between the basic human urges and egocentric wisheson the one hand and the demands of conscience and society on the other hand. ~ Selma Fraiberg

I'm pretty much a loner and I've lived under the radar. ~ Selma Blair

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall. ~ Barack Obama

For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Strange, when you ask anyone's advice you see yourself what is right. ~ Selma Lagerlof

I think I'm more approachable with long hair. When it's short, I come across as being artsy and weird. ~ Selma Blair

There must be a solemn and terrible aloneness that comes over the child as he takes those first independent steps. All this is lost to memory and we can only reconstruct it through analogies in later life ... To the child who takes his first steps and finds himself walking alone, this moment must bring the first sharp sense of the uniqueness and separateness of his body and his person, the discovery of the solitary self. ~ Selma Fraiberg

There is so little that one can do for the dead! ~ Selma Lagerlof

I do turn down things that I feel aren't right for me, like when it's some kind of adolescent thing that might typecast me, but I'm not worried about it. ~ Selma Blair

Part of me would love to have been a leading lady because there's a lot of glamour that goes with that and a lot of applause, but I've been very blessed. ~ Selma Blair

There isn't much that tastes better than praise from those who are wise and capable. ~ Selma Lagerlof

I don't like slugs and tentacles and calamari or anything. Actually, tentacles made me turn into a vegetarian in high school. I'm not anymore, but in high school, we were dissecting squid. ~ Selma Blair

I realize the importance of retelling those stories is so that, one, we don't forget what our ancestors had to do so we can be where we are, and two, to just educate the newer generation. I'm being educated by all these films [ The Root and Selma] and the things I've had the opportunity to be a part of, and kids even younger than me are being educated, too. It's important to make sure those stories never die. ~ Stephan James

Soldier on guard says they've identified "someone on two legs a hundred metres from the outpost". The other soldier, in the lookout, says "A girl about ten," but by then they're already shooting. Girl's dead[ ... ]The point is this use of code, on two legs, denoting human. It reminded me of that speech by their Prime Minister saying that we were beasts walking on two legs [ ... ]The idea that having legs makes you human. I thought of adding a Primo Levi-ish dimension to it. Merging this two-legged idea with a sort of general question about what is a man, you know, linking it to "if this is a man who labours in the mud/ who knows no peace/ who fights for a crust of bread?" [ ... ] my thesis being that the occupation, the closures, the siege have made amputees of all of us, crawling around in the mud. Legless in Gaza. The lot of us. ~ Selma Dabbagh

I'm a working actress able to make choices based on characters rather than what I 'should' do for my career. ~ Selma Blair

The SNCC base of operation, at the corner of Jackson and High Streets, was in the heart of the black community in Montgomery. I don't remember too much else about the city, but I'll always remember that corner. There were hundreds of young people behind police barricades of some sort. Lots of college students, some white, from up North, and some local black folks and college students. The whole Selma-to-Montgomery push, and this ancillary thrust by SNCC in Montgomery, was because on the other side of that barricade there were white folks who had shown they would stop at nothing, including violence, to protect white supremacy. ~ Junius Williams

There is so much one would rather not believe until one has seen for oneself whether it is true. ~ Selma Lagerlof

I played teen roles until high definition came out, and I could never understand it. I would go in for adult roles and be older than many of the people auditioning, but they'd cast the girl without a line on her face. ~ Selma Blair

I think it's been confusing for people because I haven't had a linear career. ~ Selma Blair

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope is what led me here today
with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be. [January 3, 2008] ~ Barack Obama

He who is sorrowful can force himself to smile, but he who is glad cannot weep. ~ Selma Lagerlof

I'm open to anything. I would love to play someone completely off the wall. ~ Selma Blair

A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later. ~ Selma Fraiberg

I have no patience with anyone born after World War II. You have to explain everything to these people. ~ Selma Diamond

A wedding is such a girl thing. ~ Selma Blair

There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons. ~ Douglas Brinkley

I'm flatchested, I'm short, I'm brunette, I have droopy eyes, and so people have a hard time casting me as a 'beauty.' ~ Selma Blair

I will do almost anything for the sake of a joke or for the sake of someone's real belief in something to help tell a story. I will not do something shocking for the sake of being nasty. If it's not hurting anyone's feelings, I'm in on the joke. ~ Selma Blair

I have very little faith that I'll ever find someone. I've had some bad luck and I've made some bad choices - not in men, but in how I've chosen to deal with relationships. ~ Selma Blair

I think getting married gave me a focus. It gave me a focus and direction I want to have in my life. And I think having another person that you make such a purposeful bond with has given me the opportunity to see how that can be with all the other aspects of my life. ~ Selma Blair

Like it or not, we all carry the past of our country. The unresolved conflicts of race and class lay coiled, ready to erupt, unless we set our minds to an honest reckoning with that past and a search for solutions grounded in genuine truth and justice. Unlike the cursing anonymous voice on a telephone, or the menacing face, or the billy club that split John Lewis's head in Selma, Alabama, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, implicit bias is hard to see; implicit bias is a silent snake that slinks around in ways we don't notice. ~ Mitch Landrieu

It was like I had a baby and I suddenly started to feel I could play anything. ~ Selma Blair

There is always a third possibility, as long as you have the ability to find it. ~ Selma Lagerlof

three of us who worked together on this book. When Bill Craig of LifeWay ~ Selma Wilson

It is often the case with the silent children about us, that they cherish a dream which they dare not talk about. ~ Selma Lagerlof

He was leading those who risked their lives over that bridge in Selma, not Janice Joplin, Columbia University, or a labor union. It wasn't John Lennon that taught people about love and peaceful resistance - that job fell on the shoulders of a Jewish carpenter. ~ Glenn Beck

Think of all the hate there is in Red China, then take a look around to Selma, Alabama. ~ Barry McGuire

He needed so much to weep. All the distrust of life which misfortunes had brought to the little Värmland boy needed tears to wash it away. Distrust that love and joy, beauty and strength blossomed on the earth, distrust in himself, all must go, all did go, for it was Easter; the dead lived and the Spirit of Fasting would never again come into power. ~ Selma Lagerlof

I went through a period of pulling away from everything - acting, people - not sure if I would ever have a voice in this business. ~ Selma Blair

Shouldn't we fear life? Who steers a safe boat? Around us sorrow swells like a heaving ocean; we can see how the hungry waves lick the ship's sides, how they climb to board her. No safe anchorage, no solid ground, no steady ship, as far as the eye can see; only an unknown sky over an ocean full of trouble! ~ Selma Lagerlof

I've had sex, so I'm not wearing white. ~ Selma Blair

Bathroom humor, fart, and poo poo humor in movies gets a laugh. It's a pretty easy audience, and that's been around for ages. ~ Selma Blair

Young horses who cannot bear the whip or spur find life hard. At every smart they start forward and rush to their destruction, and when the way is stony and difficult, they know no better expedient than to overturn the cart and gallop madly away. ~ Selma Lagerlof

Perhaps I have managed some sort of longevity because I haven't won the lead roles. ~ Selma Blair

News footage came on the TV during dinner of bloody bodies coming back from battle in Vietnam, or the race riots in the South, people getting hosed in Selma, Alabama, or the Biafra war, where I got my name. In my household, it was explained and discussed with the children, as a way of educating us from when we first started grade school why racism and war were wrong, what this all really means. ~ Jello Biafra

I think we all feel like misfits when we open our mouth sometimes, you know? ~ Selma Blair

To hell with memory. It was like feeling around in basket of apples only to be confronted by a snake. ~ Selma Dabbagh

What is so certain of victory as patience? ~ Selma Lagerlof

What I've learned about that word is context, where the world is coming from - in the era the film is set, it obviously is used derogatorily. In 'Selma,' it was the same sort of thing. Of course now, in music, it's used in many more ways, including ways that takes the sting out of it. It all depends on where and when it is used, and how you look at it. But again in 'Race,' it is intensely disrespectful. ~ Stephan James

By that tomb grows Gibran's sorrow together with the cypress trees, and above the tomb his spirit flickers every night commemorating Selma, joining the branches of the trees in sorrowful wailing, mourning and lamenting the going of Selma, who, yesterday was a beautiful tune on the lips of life and today is a silent secret in the bosom of the earth.
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Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.
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He lives spiritually in the past because the present passes swiftly, and the future seems to him an approach to the oblivion of the grave.
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Now I know that there is something higher than heaven and deeper than the ocean and stranger than life and death and time. I know now what I did not know before.
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When I walked in the fields, I saw the token of Eternity in the awakening of nature, and when I sat by the seashore I heard the waves singing the song of Eternity.
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We were three people, gathered and crushed by the hands of destiny; and all of us were toys in the hands of fate.
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Be happy because I shall live in you after my death.
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This is the only friend I shall have after you are gone, but how can he console me when he is suffering also? How can a broken heart find consolation in a disappointed soul? A sorrowful woman cannot be comforted by her neighbour's sorrow, nor can ~ Kahlil Gibran

When you reflect upon the significance of Dr. King to this nation, it's criminal that he hasn't had a feature film that was centered around him until now. That, in and of itself, was emotional. But when you're doing scenes on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, with people still living in Selma and now in their 60s and 70s who had actually marched, who were there that original Bloody Sunday, that's humbling ... that's deeply moving. You're no longer acting at that stage, you're just reacting, because it takes the filmmaking process to another dimension. ~ David Oyelowo

There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So (my parents) got together (sic) and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama ~ Barack Obama

One thing 'not right' on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge. ~ Douglas Brinkley

Recently, John and I got to go to Selma and perform it on the same bridge that Martin Luther King walked over. Once a landmark of a divided nation, the spirit of this bridge now for all people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or social status. This bridge was built on hope and welded with compassion. Common ~ John Legend

And even if you clutch a thousand stars, she's strong enough to carry myriads more. I am still here. The dream is over. I am alone – like red
wine, my hot blood is seething. You are not here and were so near and we were such sweet tempestuous fire. ~ Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger

We have needed to define ourselves by reclaiming the words that define us. They have used language as weapons. When we open ourselves to what they say and how they say it, our narrow prejudices evaporate and we are nourished and armed. ~ Selma James

Members of Congress, outraged by the events at Selma, forty times interrupted his address with applause. Johnson closed by raising his thumbs, fists clenched, and proclaiming, "Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And, we shall . . . overcome. ~ James T. Patterson

The problem with paparazzi is that it makes you question your boundaries, like, how do I say, 'That's enough guys?' ~ Selma Blair

Have you ever seen a child sitting on its mother's knee listening to fairy stories? As long as the child is told of cruel giants and of the terrible suffering of beautiful princesses, it holds its head up and its eyes open; but if the mother begins to speak of happiness and sunshine, the little one closes its eyes and falls asleep with its head against her breast ... I am a child like that, too. Others may like stories of flowers and sunshine; but I choose the dark nights and sad destinies. ~ Selma Lagerlof