Top 100 Civil Right Quotes
#1. Everything that liberals want they call a civil right. This avoids them having to argue about it and puts the halo around the issue.
Ann Coulter
#2. Gay rights to me that is the last civil right that we have not granted in America and I think it's an enormous embarrassment.
Jodi Picoult
#3. It's so simple: Right to marriage is a civil right, which like all civil rights should not depend on what state you happen to live in.
Annie Laurie Gaylor
#4. A second line is in effect a civil rights demonstration. Literally, demonstrating the civil right of the community to assemble in the street for peaceful purposes. Or, more simply, demonstrating the civil right of the community to exist.
Ned Sublette
#5. If your Bible tells you that gay people ought not be married in your church, don't tell them they can't be married at city hall. Marriage is a civil rite as well a civil right, and we can't let religious bigotry close the door to justice to anyone.
Julian Bond
#6. A high-speed connection is no more an essential civil right than 3G cell phone service or a Netflix account. Increasing competition and restoring academic excellence in abysmal public schools is far more of an imperative to minority children than handing them iPads.
Michelle Malkin
#7. I'm going to have to bring up the nigger bill again. [Said to a southern U.S. Senator upon the occasion of the Republicans re-introducing the Civil Right Act of 1957, according to LBJ's Special Counsel Harry McPherson.]
Lyndon B. Johnson
#8. I don't think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.
Barack Obama
#9. Surely a tired woman on her way to work at six in the morning on a subway deserves the right to get there safely . everyone who changes his or her life because of crime . have been denied a basic civil right.
George H. W. Bush
#10. Homosexuality is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family.
Pat Buchanan
#11. You know you don't see hospital consultants going on strike, and I don't believe that teachers and head teachers should. It's within their rights, it's a civil right, but I think it is wrong in terms of the reputation of the profession.
Michael Gove
#13. Peace is a civil right which makes other human rights possible. Peace is a precondition for our existence. Peace permits our continued existence.
Dennis Kucinich
#14. At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.
George Clooney
#15. Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.
William Jennings Bryan
#16. I oppose the attempts of homosexual activists to treat homosexual activity as a civil right to be protected and promoted by the government.
Todd Akin
#17. What we're about is the belief that access to affordable and real-time health information is a basic human right, and it's a civil right.
Elizabeth Holmes
#18. Marriage is a civil right. If you don't want gay people to marry in your church, good for you. But you can't say they can't marry in your city.
Julian Bond
#19. The crowning insult [of abortion] is that this ordeal is represented to her as some kind of a privilege.Her sad and onerous duty is garbed in the rhetoric of a civil right.
Germaine Greer
#20. [Speaking about same-sex marriage] It's about familiarity, and I think the only reason they're uncomfortable with the notion of same-sex marriages is because they haven't come into contact with gay and lesbian couples enough to understand that it's about love and that it is a civil right.
Jennifer Beals
#22. Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies.
Mahatma Gandhi
#23. If you look at attitudes today and where they are headed, it's clear to me that supporting equal rights, including the rights to civil marriage, is a net positive for winning elections, as well as the right thing to do.
Ken Mehlman
#24. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Lyndon B. Johnson
#26. Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.
Mahatma Gandhi
#27. Health is a human necessity; health is a human right
James Lenhart
#28. The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right - subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.
L. Neil Smith
#29. Israel reoccupied the cities of the West Bank by a unilateral action, and reestablished the civil and military occupation by a unilateral action, and it is the one that determines whether or not a Palestinian citizen has the right to reside in any part of the Palestinian Territory.
Mahmoud Abbas
#30. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.
Samuel Adams
#31. The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right.
Robert Kennedy
#32. I guess it's the curse of our generation, having to put aside our lives to do the right thing.
Allan Dare Pearce
#33. Compromise where you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say 'No, you move'.
Christopher Markus
#34. This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Right Act - constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation.
Stephanie Cutter
#35. Freelancing in Somalia during their civil war and in Kuwait right after the first Bush War, I had some rather intense experiences that made life in the U.S. seem rather shallow and superfluous.
Peter Menzel
#36. I think a lot of Civil War stuff is written - As they say, history is written by the victors. And one of the things that I think is fascinating about this from a purely dramatic perspective is whether someone is right or wrong, you understand where they're coming from in this.
Josh Radnor
#37. The Greek Civil War led to three decades of illegality for the Left, which had to operate under front organisations. The Cold War entrenched in power - backed by the US and Britain - a monarchist, authoritarian right for whom political violence was customary.
Anonymous
#38. We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off.
John Trudell
#39. Sex as you like it is an animal right -- no mere civil liberty. Defend it with your beak and claw.
Irving Rosenthal
#40. Civil Wars happen when the victimized are armed. Genocide happens when they are not.
A.E. Samaan
#41. They're right. We're not fighting for the people anymore, Falcon... Look at us. We're just fighting.
Mike Millar
#42. The spine of the FBI is the rule of law. The spine of the FBI is a commitment to doing the right thing, in the right way, while protecting civil liberties.
James Comey
#43. Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection - without pretending that access itself is such a right.
Vint Cerf
#44. When I think of civil liberties I think of the founding principles of the country. The freedoms that are in the First Amendment. But also the fundamental right to privacy.
Tim Cook
#45. Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
Thomas Jefferson
#46. We need to guarantee equal rights and civil rights and say that, here in America, workers have the right to organize - women have the right to choose - and justice belongs to everyone regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation.
John F. Kerry
#47. We call on the Senate to reject any judicial nominee who does not affirm fundamental civil rights, including a woman's right [to obtain an abortion on demand]. The threat an [pro-life] judiciary poses to women's lives demands nothing less.
Susana Martinez
#48. In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining ... . We demand this fraud be stopped.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#49. If I'm president, there are going to be government vans that drive around and pick up people who shouldn't be wearing certain clothing. Talk about lack of civil rights - I'm sorry, I'm pulling you right off the street, and we're giving you clothes that you're going to be O.K. in.
Denis Leary
#50. I have loved the Department of Justice ever since, as a young boy, I watched Robert Kennedy prove during the Civil Rights Movement how the department can - and must - always be a force for that which is right.
Eric Holder
#51. Those who are troubled by our existing programs are not interested in a repeat of 9/11, and those who defend these programs are not dismissive of civil liberties. The challenge is getting the details right, and that's not simple.
Barack Obama
#52. If youre a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.
Al Gore
#53. And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second, we have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don't forget the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that's what we're going to have to do.
Mitt Romney
#54. I didn't change. The Democratic Party slid to the Left from right under me.
Charlton Heston
#55. I did what I thought was right. I'm not trying to win any popularity contest.
Sue Eakin
#56. A hastily written "Civil Rights Act" was rushed through Congress. President Andrew Johnson immediately vetoed it, noting that the right to confer citizenship rested with the several states, and that "the tendency of the bill is to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion".
Eustace Mullins
#57. Every man has a right to be equal with every other man.
Abraham Lincoln
#58. Well, it's the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?
Russell Simmons
#59. Demanding domestic security in times of war invites carelessness in preserving civil liberties and the right of privacy. Frequently the people are only too anxious for their freedoms to be sacrificed on the altar of authoritarianism thought to be necessary to remain safe and secure.
Ron Paul
#60. Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' I said: 'that's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.
Dick Gregory
#61. It is absolutely right for the state to define the rights and status of people cohabiting in different forms of relationships, including civil partnerships.
Justin Welby
#62. Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.
David K. Shipler
#63. This provision (the 4th Amendment) speaks for itself. Its plain object is to secure the perfect enjoyment of that great right of the common law, that a man's house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion.
Joseph Story
#64. I'm a disgruntled ex-civil servant, and I'm armed. If you don't process my license right now I'm going to start making small, yet significant holes in people.
Howard Tayler
#65. All civil rights and the right to hold office were to be extended to persons of any Christian denomination.
Roger Sherman
#66. Right then," Campbell began, his tone so civil it was offensive. "May I have your name for the record, Miss ... ?"
"Eliza Braun," Eliza sneered. "Here, I'll spell it for you
B-U-G-G-E-R-O-F-F.
Tee Morris
#67. Being an American is about having the right to be who you are. Sometimes that doesn't happen.
Herb Ritts
#68. In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news.
Bob Edwards
#69. You can gesture at the transnational problem of Islamist terrorism all you like, but it's just hot air unless you invest in proper security on the ground in your own country, with the right safeguards to civil liberties.
Giles Foden
#70. One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.
Abraham Lincoln
#71. Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.
Dick Gregory
#72. Democracy is disruptive ... there is no right in a democratic civil society to be free of disruption.
Naomi Wolf
#73. I used to do Civil War re-enacting between the ages of 15 and 19. I was part of a unit that was considered very authentic. We would source the right wools, the right buttons for the costumes. We had the right look.
Cary Fukunaga
#74. With the ascension of Charles I to the throne we come at last to the Central Period of English History (not to be confused with the Middle Ages, of course), consisting in the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive).
W.C. Sellar
#75. And when the time is right, I hope that African Americans will again look to the party of emancipation, civil liberty, and individual freedom.
Rand Paul
#76. Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back- government has no place in the middle.
Mark Kirk
#77. The majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former.
Theodore Roosevelt
#78. Individual civil disobedience was everybody's inherent right, like the right of self-defence in normal life.
Mahatma Gandhi
#79. Johnny Reb' laughed. 'What's it to a soldier the right and the wrong of it all? He's there for the fighting, that's what he likes. Doesn't matter who you're fighting, long as he gives you a good fight.
Alexandra Ripley
#80. The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party.
Gloria Steinem
#81. Health care is not a privilege. It's a right. It's a right as fundamental as civil rights. It's a right as fundamental as giving every child a chance to get a public education.
Rod Blagojevich
#82. The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury. One of the first duties of government is to afford that protection.
John Marshall
#83. The [Apache] tribe was under siege by government agents, who had jailed some of the medicine men for practicing their rituals. Freedom of religion was cherished as a sacrosanct American right -- everywhere, that is, but on the archipelago of Indian life.
Timothy Egan
#84. We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.
Walter Lippmann
#86. Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion.
Mahatma Gandhi
#87. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment ... He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation.
Christopher Dodd
#88. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.
Abraham Lincoln
#89. An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.
Hugo Black
#90. We are fighting for the right to live as free humans in this society. In fact, we are actually fighting for rights that are even greater than civil rights and that is human rights.
Malcolm X
#91. The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.
Dionne Warwick
#92. I'd go to a more civil party just to socialize, and I didn't know what to do with myself. So I drank a shot of tequila. And then I drank another one. I probably had four or five shots. I was like, "Tequila! It wakes you right up!" But no.
Kurt Vile
#93. We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation - no compromise, no filibuster - and that include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote.
Bayard Rustin
#94. Right after the Civil War there was considerable talk about reviving Lincoln's brief experiment with the Constitutional monetary system. Had not the European money-trust intervened, it would have no doubt become an established institution.
W. Cleon Skousen
#95. If those civil rights groups are going into those orphanages and offering to look after those children, then they have every right to make a stink about it. But they're not. They're not offering a solution.
Madonna Ciccone
#96. With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.
Abraham Lincoln
#97. Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.
Harry S. Truman
#98. We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.
Thomas Jefferson
#99. For the gay establishment, the death of right and wrong began when gaining civil rights ceased to be enough.
Tammy Bruce
#100. I pushed the process forward by saying, 'We should do this, this, and this right now. Please find the budget for me to find a structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, so we can do the preliminary work.'
Michael Arad
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