Civil rights Quotes

Knowing what must be done does away with fear.

— Rosa Parks

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

— Martin Luther King, Jr

“It is an artist's duty to reflect the times.”

— Nina Simone

Being able to laugh got me through.

— Toni Morrison

ACLU has become eccentric and destructive.

— Newt Gingrich

Any kind of civil rights oppression is wrong.

— Bryan Cranston

You can't put civil rights on the ballot.

— Jesse Ventura

Activism is my rent for living on this planet.

— Alice Walker

The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.

— Thomas Jefferson

The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.

— Thomas Jefferson

If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

— Noam Chomsky

When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the modern Southern GOP was born.

— Steve Kornacki

If you can't find anybody else, then I'll go. So, they couldn't find anybody else. So, I went.

— Victoria Gray Adams

Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.

— Albert Camus

When I wrote 'The Secret Life of Bees,' I was writing about civil rights.

— Sue Monk Kidd

The civil rights fight was a very important fight.

— Walter Cronkite

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything…

— Cyndi Lauper

Now liberals compare their every riot, every traffic blockage, every Starbucks-window-smashing street protest to the civil rights movement -- which was only…

— Ann Coulter

I think there are profound differences between the civil rights struggle for African Americans and the civil rights struggle for gay Americans.

— Christopher Rice

“Between George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the US Constitution is no longer worth the paper it's written on.”

— Michel Templet

Rosa Parks was a woman of strength, conviction, and morality. Her action on December 1, 1955, to defy the law made her…

— John Shimkus

“Justice” [Sept. 15]: It appears that the outcome of the civil rights movement has been to replace “Blacks not welcome” with “This…

— Anonymous

The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against…

— Thomas Jefferson

Protests, such as those in favor of labor rights, women's suffrage, civil rights and gay rights, helped to make America as great…

— Max Boot

A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a…

— Lyndon B. Johnson

“Truth be told, the party was moving in entirely the wrong direction. Ever since 1964, when Barry Goldwater championed “states’ rights”—understood to…

— Joshua Green

They were beginning to burn churches. They were beginning to move beyond crosses... They burned churches because they understood that the Christian…

— Ed King

So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and…

— Cornel West

“Feeling that our demands were moderate, I had assumed that they would be granted with little question; I had believed that the…

— Martin Luther King Jr

They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three…

— Malcolm X

President Obama is a man who had certain advantages because of the civil rights movement. He had the opportunity to go to…

— Danny Glover

Forgiveness became a big part of the civil rights movement, juxtaposed against the violence of protesters and law enforcement. King described forgiveness…

— Anthea Butler

“3. Serving Two Masters Derrick Bell has pointed out a third structure that impedes reform, this time in law. To litigate a…

— Richard Delgado

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no…

— Thomas Jefferson

In 1694 a law was passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians should forfeit all his…

— Henry David Thoreau

“The basic move of liberalism is to replace the social centre (normal people) with the margin (foreigners, minorities, deviants) forever. The stack…

— Mike Maxwell

...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent… They must harass, debate,…

— Lorraine Hansberry

A first attempt to recover the right of self government may fail, so may a second, a third, etc. But as a…

— Thomas Jefferson

“There was one story that anger certainly lit the fuse of. In the 1960's, in my home town of Jackson, the civil…

— Eudora Welty

“In a landmark ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan changed the standard for defamation and libel by requiring plaintiffs to prove malice--that…

— Bryan Stevenson