Civil Rights Quotes - Page 12

• In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write.

  Tom Morello

  Country, Song, Struggle

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The trouble is, SMers are allowing themselves to be defined by what they are not. We think, "Oh, so many people believe that we're all murderers and rapists, and we have to explain that we're not!" Uh so, a slogan for the gay civil rights movement should be "Normal, Non-threatening and Not After Your Children"?

  Laura Antoniou

  Children, Believe, Gay

  "Unsafe at Any Speed or: Safe, Sane and Consensual, My Fanny". Pucker Up, Issue 1, Winter 1995.

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• Well, maybe there are one or two things about the double jeopardy concept that are overlooked. I could be charged with violating my probation. I could be charged for illegal possession of a firearm or violating his civil rights if I did kill him. But when you're making a movie, there's only so much that you can do. I know that some people, while thoroughly enjoying it, have said, It's a little bit implausible. But it's such great fun.

  Ashley Judd

  Fun, Rights, Two

  "A list at last" by Bob Strauss, www.theguardian.com. January 28, 2000.

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• The civil rights movement is understanding your freedom under the Constitution of these United States and if anyone tries to take those freedoms from you, you better rise up and fight and that's what we're doing together.

  Ken Hutcherson

  Fighting, Rights, Understanding

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• Even as we continue to carry the banner of civil rights and environmental justice, we've also got to focus on many, many people - for them, life starts with a good job.

  John Hickenlooper

  Jobs, Rights, Justice

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Country, War, Thinking

  Cosmopolitan, Feb. 1940

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• The civil rights situation is like a pregnancy. It will get worse, I believe, before it gets better. What the usual pregnancy comes to is a decent baby. That is what we all hope will be the end product of this stress. It is customary, at the end of a pregnancy, to have for your pains a decent baby.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Baby, Pain, Stress

  Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Jean Wade Gayles (2003). “Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.18, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• It iscrucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment to the freedom of all of us, which transcends the category of "sexual preference" and the issue of civil rights, to become a politics of asking women's questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women--not a chosen few--shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture.

  Adrienne Rich

  Integrity, Commitment, Issues

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• There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for theother fellow to make the first move--and he, in turn, waits for you. The minute a person whose word means a great deal dares to take the open- hearted and courageous way, many others follow. Not everyone can be turned aside from meanness and hatred, but the great majority of Americans is heading in that direction. I have a great belief in the future of my people and my country.

  Marian Anderson

  Country, Moving, Heart

  Marian Anderson (1956). “My Lord, what a Morning: An Autobiography”, p.312, University of Illinois Press

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• In your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Sex, Rights, Government

  "An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting: At the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872" by Susan B. Anthony, Rochester N.Y.: Daily democrat & chronicle book print, 1874.

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• The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Taken, Party, Responsibility

  Letter to Charles F. Gardner, August 9, 1924.

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• I think the authors of that notable instrument [the Declaration of Independence] intended to include all men.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Thinking, Equality

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• So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and human beings. And that is a deep moral and spiritual issue, which can of course be backed up by Civil Rights Commissions which enforce the laws against any form of discrimination.

  Cornel West

  Spiritual, Law, Issues

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• This bill attempts to make sure that President Clinton is not allowed to do by Executive Order what Congress has declined to enact in the past two congressional sessions namely, to treat homosexuals as a special class protected under various titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  Jesse Helms

  Past, Rights, Order

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• Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

  Derrick Bell

  Rights, Ready

  Derrick Bell (2008). “Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence Of Racism”, p.4, Basic Books

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• The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.

  John F. Kennedy

  Rights, Thank God, Movement

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• The government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures.The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill.

  Ayn Rand

  Jail, Rights, Government

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• 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

  Rights, Voting, Foundation

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• There are still civil rights issues. There are still people who can't be visited by their spouse in the hospital because they're gay. These are humanitarian issues. At the end of the day, all you want is for people to be happy in the pursuit of life, love and liberty.

  Brandi Carlile

  Love Life, Gay, Issues

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• History of America, Part I (1776-1966): Declaration of Independence, Constitutional Convention, Louisiana Purchase, Civil War, Reconstruction, World War I, Great Depression, New Deal, World War II, TV, Cold war, civil-rights movement, Vietnam. History of America, Part II (1967-present): the Super Bowl era. The Super Bowl has become Main Street’s Mardi Gras.

  Norman Chad

  War, America, Rights

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• I think that the thing that we learned back in the day of the Civil Rights Movement is that you do have to keep on keeping on.

  Charlayne Hunter-Gault

  Thinking, Rights, Movement

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• When Congress gets through investigating Attorney General Janet Reno, will her agency become known as the Obstruction of Justice Department? The civil rights movement was one of the great moral crusades in the first half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in more recent times it has become all too much like those it opposed, demanding racial double standards and even condoning verbal and violent attacks against members of other races.

  Thomas Sowell

  Agency, Rights, Race

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• The laws ought to be so framed as to secure the safety of every citizen as much as possible. ... Political liberty does not consist in the notion that a man may do whatever he pleases; liberty is the right to do whatsoever the laws allow. ... The equality of the citizens consists in that they should all be subject to the same laws.

  Catherine the Great

  Men, Law, Safety

  Proposals for a New Law Code, 1768.

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• I feel like, in many ways, Billie Holiday's still very under-appreciated as an artist. People focus on her voice, and all of the very recognizable vocal things that she does, which are great. But I wanted to, with this project, start the conversation again about her as a radical feminist, as a civil rights activist - taking a stance. And also just [her] being a non-conformist.

  Jose James

  Holiday, Artist, Rights

  Source: revive-music.com

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• This [EURO] was never a hate group, the European American Unity and Rights Organization was an organization in its charter is dedicated to true civil rights and stopping discrimination against people, that the best qualified people should be engaged and that every people have the right to preserve their heritage, their freedom and their values.

  David Duke

  Hate, Rights, Organization

  "CNN-Edited Interview Proves that Dr. Duke is Right about Zio-Censorship!". CNN Interview, davidduke.com. January 7, 2015.

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