Civil Rights Quotes - Page 33

• President Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man, but if he had fought World War II the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German now.

  Roy Wilkins

  War, Men, Rights

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• Generally, the arguments for same-sex marriage go along these lines: 'I have a civil right.' What the homosexual movement wants to do is to hitch their agenda to the civil rights movement, but I point out that this is illegitimate for a number of reasons. Number one, no black person has ever left his black-ness or changed his black-ness, but plenty of people have come out of the homosexual movement. What we need to do is distinguish between race and behavior.

  Erwin W. Lutzer

  Sex, Numbers, Rights

  Source: www1.cbn.com

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• I don't think there are any pure Africans of the African Americans, but the African part of our history was pretty much taken away from us during slavery, so the 60s gave us a chance, because of the civil rights movement, to kind of re-examine and make some sort of formal connection to our African-ness.

  Herbie Hancock

  Taken, Thinking, Rights

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• In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Mean, Past, Rights

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• We don't go for segregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy; you control your own politics; you control your own society; you control your own everything.

  Malcolm X

  Separation, Segregation, Economy

  "Malcolm X: The Last Speeches".

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• Look at what I've done my entire life. I have been working on behalf of civil rights, women's rights, human rights for years and I know how challenging it is to change our political system and I have the highest regard for those who have put themselves on the line.

  Hillary Clinton

  Rights, Years, Political

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• I think that some of the greatest muckrakers and some of the greatest investigative journalists of all time had strong feelings about civil rights. There is a role for the journalist-advocate. And as long as you play your cards on the table, I think thats a role that we should allow.

  Pete Earley

  Strong, Thinking, Rights

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• We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  White, Unjust, May

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.100, Beacon Press

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• In every aspect and among almost every demographic, how American society digested and processed the long, dark chapter between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the civil rights movement has been delusion.

  Douglas A. Blackmon

  War, Dark, Rights

  Douglas A. Blackmon (2009). “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II”, p.394, Anchor

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• I've heard people in the Middle East tell me that the most inspiring thing for them as people struggling against dictatorship in the Middle East is the memory of the civil rights movement.

  Peter Beinart

  Memories, Struggle, Rights

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think my experience at the University of Chicago, working in the civil rights movement, working in the peace movement, working with community organizations, did a lot to influence the politics that I have.

  Bernie Sanders

  Thinking, Rights, Organization

  "Bernie Sanders On Being Jewish And A Democratic Socialist". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne, www.npr.org. November 6, 2015.

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• When I went to law school, nobody heard of civil rights.

  Constance Baker Motley

  School, Rights, Law

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• It really did take Billy Lucas's suicide to wake me up to, kind of, the damage of the success of the LGBT civil-rights movement - higher-profile LGBT people - has done to LGBT youth who are trapped out there in those shitholes. But I don't think we need Pride. I am still opposed, on philosophical grounds, to the flap of the rainbow windsock and the damage that does to us intellectually.

  Dan Savage

  Suicide, Philosophical, Pride

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Government, Class

  "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks". Book by H. L. Mencken (p. 33), 1956.

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• The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Men, Rights

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• There are no 'white' or 'coloured' signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

  John F. Kennedy

  White, Battle, Foxholes

  Message to Congress on proposed civil rights bill, 19 June 1963

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• Some of the most moving experiences I've had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

  Noam Chomsky

  Moving, Struggle, Rights

  "Noam Chomsky on Love: 'Life's Empty Without It'". Big think Interview, bigthink.com. August 18, 2009.

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• Lovers of freedom, lovers of social justice, disarmers, peacekeepers, civil disobeyers, democrats, civil-rights activists, and defenders of the environment are legions in a single multiform cause, and they will gain strength by knowing it, taking encouragement from it, and when appropriate and opportune, pooling their efforts.

  Jonathan Schell

  Strength, Encouragement, Knowing

  Jonathan Schell (2005). “The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People”

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• Probably, the nature of homophobia will never be widely interrogated, while we will continue to be excluded from school curricula, subjected to vicious media distortions, or entirely ignored, denied basic civil rights while our demands are ridiculed and derided. But in the midst of all this only one thing has changed for certain. We have changed. We will never go back into the closet.

  Sarah Schulman

  School, Rights, Media

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• The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.

  Malcolm X

  America, Rights, Justice

  "Racism: the Cancer that is Destroying America", Egyptian Gazette, August 25, 1964.

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• Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women.

  Joss Whedon

  Inspiring, Equality, Men

  Equality Now Tribute Address, delivered 15 May 2006, Men on the Front Lines Honoree

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• If it's necessary to form a Black Nationalist army, we'll form a Black Nationalist army. It'll be ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death.

  Malcolm X

  Army, Black, Liberty

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• President Obama is a man who had certain advantages because of the civil rights movement. He had the opportunity to go to some of the best schools in this country - schools that train you how to run the political paradigm, not challenge it. The leaders of the Black Power Movement were challenging that paradigm.

  Danny Glover

  Running, Country, School

  Interview with Ed Rampell, progressive.org. February 8, 2012.

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• We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs.

  James L. Farmer, Jr.

  Past, Tomorrow, Martyr

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• I heard the prophet Joseph Smith say the time would come when this nation would so far depart from its original purity, its glory, and its love for freedom and its protection of civil rights and religious rights, that the Constitution of our country would hang as it were by a thread. He said, also, that this people, the sons of Zion, would rise up and save the Constitution and bear it off triumphantly.

  Eliza R. Snow

  Country, Religious, Son

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