Civil Rights Quotes - Page 23

• No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Dream

  Marian Wright Edelman (2013). “The Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours”, p.29, Beacon Press

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• The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

  Eleanor Holmes Norton

  Peace, Ubuntu, Rights

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• 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

  Thinking, Talking, Ideas

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• The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

  William James

  Happiness, Society, Politics

  Talks to Teachers (1899) "What makes a Life Significant?"

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• Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.

  Joshua L. Liebman

  Inspirational, Positive, Acceptance

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• It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Sports, Baseball, Football

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• We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases.

  Adolf Hitler

  Rights, Ideas, Please

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• Public education is the key civil rights issue of the 21st century. Our nation's knowledge-based economy demands that we provide young people from all backgrounds and circumstances with the education and skills necessary to become knowledge workers. If we don't, we run the risk of creating an even larger gap between the middle class and the poor. This gap threatens our democracy, our society and the economic future of America.

  Eli Broad

  Running, Work, Issues

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• I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

  Malcolm X

  Grateful, Men, Thinking

  "The Autobiography of Malcolm X".

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• The clergy ... believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Believe, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1900). “The Life and Writings of ...”

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• The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Men, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.172, Cambridge University Press

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• The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

  James Madison

  Religious, Rights, Liberty

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• People don't think about the fact that when Barack Obama's parents had him it was illegal for them to be married in several states in this country. So if we start making it okay that certain people can marry and other people can't, it's a slippery slope of civil rights.

  Kerry Washington

  Country, Gay, Thinking

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• I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy. The civil rights movement thrives on unity and inclusion, not division and exclusion. My husband's struggle parallels that of the gay rights movement.

  Coretta Scott King

  Husband, Attitude, Believe

  Chicago Sun Times, April 1, 1998.

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• Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right of religious freedom.

  John Quincy Adams

  Religious, Liberty, Foundation

  John Quincy Adams (1968). “Writings of John Quincey Adams”

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• I have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense.

  James Bryce

  Equality, Thinking, Rights

  James Bryce Bryce (1888). “The American Commonwealth”, Ams PressInc

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• As Dr. King said, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It is that creed of the civil rights movement that still motivates us today...So today, we take up the cause of joining arms with our immigrant brothers and sisters in that spirit... to lend a hand to those who confront injustice as a result of a broken immigration system.

  Steven Horsford

  Brother, Kings, Rights

  "Why Immigration Reform Is Part of the Civil Rights Struggle" by Arturo Conde, abcnews.go.com. March 1, 2013.

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• We have a ways to go here, but elections have consequences ... I think that our Republican colleagues, the Republican National Party, understands this is our new demographic in America as a result of the election. I think they understand if they want to be a national party, they're going to have to deal with this issue. For Latinos and other immigrants, this is the civil rights issue of our time.

  Bob Menendez

  Party, Thinking, Rights

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• We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.

  W. Reece Smith, Jr.

  Losing, Remember, Lost

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• In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 1948) in most solemn form, the dignity of a person is acknowledged to all human beings; and as a consequence there is proclaimed, as a fundamental right, the right of free movement in search for truth and in the attainment of moral good and of justice, and also the right to a dignified life.

  Pope John XXIII

  Truth, Rights, Justice

  'Pacem in Terris' (1963)

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• Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

  George Mason

  Government, Safety, Community

  George Mason's remarks on Annual Elections for the Fairfax Independent Company, circa April 1775.

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• 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.

  Jean Genet

  Gun, Power, Shadow

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

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• I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

  John F. Kennedy

  Believe, School, Men

  Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

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• Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

  William Proxmire

  Exercise, Power, Political

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• No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration!

  Malcolm X

  Men, White Man, Black

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.252, Ballantine Books

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