Civil Rights Quotes - Page 34

• The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Ambition, Mean

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Drawing, Teeth, Corruption

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.40, Rowman & Littlefield

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• A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Friends, Freedom, War

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.898, Best Books on

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• The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other.

  Angelina Grimke

  School, Rights, Understanding

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• You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.

  Ella Baker

  Strong, News Stories, Play

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• Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.

  Ella Baker

  Fighting, Spirit, Remember

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• If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.

  Walter E. Williams

  Rights, Hands, Giving

  "Human rights vs. property rights". www.wnd.com. August 03, 2005.

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• How blind to believe the civil rights movement ever ended. The civil rights movement never ends, and it never will. It has been marching since the beginning of time. Where Martin Luther King started is where Gandhi left off, and where he started, Abe Lincoln left off, and before that Whitfield all the way back to Moses. God has not moved. We have. But it is never too late. We are not at the mercy of these events. We can alter the course of history. We can stand against the dangerous arc of this story. But we need people who are willing to speak truth.

  Glenn Beck

  Kings, Believe, Rights

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• I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Silence, Political, Criticism

  Thomas Jefferson, Noble E. Cunningham (2001). “The Inaugural Addresses of President Thomas Jefferson, 1801 And 1805”, p.3, University of Missouri Press

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• Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.

  Douglas Wilder

  War, Rights, Doors

  "Obama or Clinton better for blacks?" by Douglas Wilder, www.politico.com. December 12, 2011.

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• The civil rights movement didn't deal with the issue of political disenfranchisement in the Northern cities. It didn't deal with the issues that were happening in places like Detroit, where there was a deep process of deindustrialization going on. So you have this response of angry young people, with a war going on in Vietnam, a poverty program that was insufficient, and police brutality. All these things gave rise to the black power movement. The black power movement was not a separation from the civil rights movement, but a continuation of this whole process of democratization.

  Danny Glover

  War, Cities, Issues

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

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• And to me, that's why the civil rights era is about the future, not about the past, because it's great lessons of how citizens can organize to call on the patriotic heritage of the country to tackle some of our most intractable problems and we need to do that again.

  Taylor Branch

  Country, Patriotic, Past

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The chance to own a home; chance to own an education; chance to get access to capital. This is the real civil rights battle of the twenty-first century.

  Jack Kemp

  Real, Home, Rights

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think everybody should get married. Boys and girls. Girls and boys. Boys and boys! Girls and girls! Shouldn't we all be entitled to a family-Civil rights baby it's civil rights. It doesn't get any better here in Berkeley I'll tell you that.

  Billie Joe Armstrong

  Girl, Baby, Boys

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• Obviously, In The Heat Of The Night was a landmark movie because the timing was perfect. It was in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement.

  Norman Jewison

  Night, Rights, Perfect

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• I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader.

  Adam Lambert

  Rights, Leader, Trying

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• In the women's movement, women needed men to stand up and say, 'This isn't right.' In the civil rights of the '60s, it took people of all color to demand equal rights.

  Pauley Perrette

  Men, Rights, Color

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• When I arrived in America, I experienced serious culture shock. For someone with a religious upbringing, the 1960s were an extremely difficult time. Even though religion was a big part of the civil rights and peace movements, in my college religion was treated as irrelevant, hopelessly stodgy, and behind the times.

  Feisal Abdul Rauf

  Religious, College, Rights

  Feisal Abdul Rauf (2012). “Moving the Mountain: Beyond Ground Zero to a New Vision of Islam in America”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• Having gone through the civil rights struggle, having gone through the anti-Vietnam War struggle, by the time I was in my 20s, I had something that the current generation doesnt have. And that is a sense of efficacy.

  Paul Solman

  War, Struggle, Rights

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• This generation is different. They are not as interested in chasing money or material possessions. I believe that this generation is more interested in seeking social change and a more just society than any generation since those that brought about the civil rights movement and the struggles for human dignity of the 1960s.

  Andrew Aydin

  Believe, Struggle, Rights

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.

  Pauley Perrette

  Passion, Thinking, Rights

  "Pauley Perrette: from NCIS to the Daily Planet". Interview with Robert Greenberger, www.comicmix.com. June 8, 2012.

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• I think it is a must for young people and generations yet to come, to understand, to feel, to touch, to almost smell the drama of what happened a few short years ago [the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s]. So maybe, just maybe, we will never ever repeat this unbelievable time in our history. We have to tell it all, and make it plain, and make it clear, so people will never ever forget the distance we have come, and the progress we have yet to make.

  John Lewis

  Distance, Drama, Thinking

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• I became a part of the Civil Rights movement early on and that has really shaped a great deal of my thinking.

  Amber Hollibaugh

  Thinking, Rights, Movement

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The prison guards are capable of committing daily atrocities and obscenities, smiling the smile of the angels all the while.

  Jean Harris

  Angel, Prison Guards, Atrocities

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• There has to be spiritual transformation among the masses, who have to be willing to recognize that their oppression is not a law of nature. That's what Latin American bishops were doing when they formed base communities. They were trying to get peasants to recognize that you can take your fate into your own hands. That's what the civil-rights movement did here. That's what the women's movement did.

  Noam Chomsky

  Spiritual, Latin, Fate

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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