Top 77 My Civil Rights Quotes
#1. Does anyone in this room have it?"
"No, Chris, no one here has it."
"How do you know?"
"Because the mark was dark skin. Negroes are the descendants of Cain."
I didn't have my civil-rights sensibilities yet, but I was starting to get a bad feeling about God ...
Chris Crutcher
#2. Mrs. (Fanie Lou) Hamer, like her mother, also kept weapons nearby in case she needed them: 'I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom & the first cracker even looks like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won't write his mama again.
Charles E. Cobb Jr.
#3. My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.
Bruce Springsteen
#4. In my lifetime, we have lost a President, a Civil Rights leader and a Presidential candidate - all to gun violence.
Marianne Williamson
#5. In the time when my mother began standing up against prejudice and racism, the vast majority of white Americans rarely thought about civil rights.
Ezekiel Emanuel
#6. Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#7. My parents were very active in the Civil Rights Movement. My father was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker; my mother was a secretary with the Panthers.
Yaya DaCosta
#8. When I hear someone's in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-25.
Michael Savage
#9. My work has been in the field of engaged Buddhism. That is my own practice, which began in 1965 that formed the base for the work I was doing in the civil rights and anti-war movement.
Joan Halifax
#10. My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.
Kamala Harris
#11. 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
#12. every time this happens
I see my father
my brother
my would be son
I see myself
stop killing us
R H Sin
#13. That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character.
Pam Grier
#14. I think people instinctively know that their job is to give service and that they are part of a community. It had a great impact on me when my father walked the picket lines and I walked with him during the civil rights movement.
Russell Simmons
#15. I'd like to continue being involved with issues that animated my time as attorney general - criminal-justice reform and civil rights especially. I don't just want to give speeches; I'd like to involve myself in this work in a systematic way.
Eric Holder
#17. In not a single one of these little campaigns was I victorious. In other words, in each case, I personally failed, but I have lived to see the thesis upon which I was operating vindicated. And what I very often say is that I've lived to see my lost causes found.
Pauli Murray
#18. My great grandmother threw herself in front of a bus. The police tried to say she was committed suicide but the family knew she was just trying to stop civil rights.
Anthony Jeselnik
#19. Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.
Paul Farmer
#20. Some folks in the office said I should explain in my complaint that I was a civil rights attorney working on police misconduct cases. It seemed to me that no one should need those kinds of credentials to complain about misconduct by police officers.
Bryan Stevenson
#21. I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights.
Joseph Stiglitz
#22. I've fixed hard problems of all kinds, civil rights and business problems. It's the stuff I like to do, and I'm good at it, as a matter of fact ... and I never left my conscience at the door.
Deval Patrick
#23. Black lives, of course, matter. I spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights and for dignity, but if you don't want me to be here, that's OK. I don't want to out-scream people.
Bernie Sanders
#24. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist.
Joe Biden
#25. My heart beats red, white, and blue.
And with patriotism it aches
Generally, I believe in democracy, freedom and civil rights
But in particular, cupcakes
John Walter Bratton
#26. Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin's mantra that no person is above the law.
Scott Turow
#27. Senator John Stennis:
The civil rights movement did more to free the white man that the black man ... It freed my soul.
Joe Biden
#28. My parents were civil rights activists, and my mother was active in the feminist movement. Issues concerning marginalized people and especially women of color were what they cared about most in the world.
Anna Holmes
#29. Protecting the rights of service members was an important part of my work as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
Thomas Perez
#30. It was just tiresome thinking about folks having to fight for the least little thing. I loved my people for fighting, but hated the reason why, and that left me with that crosscut notion of pride and anger pulling in different directions, two kinds of muscle fighting for the same piece of bone.
Ravi Howard
#31. It is an honor to be awarded with such a high rating from an organization as well respected as the NAACP. I am pleased that the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the nation, has recognized my voting record.
Joe Baca
#32. And my mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone.
Julian Castro
#33. I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.
James Earl Jones
#34. My earliest memories are of the civil rights era. My earliest experiences were rage.
Janine Di Giovanni
#35. My parents demonstrated against the Vietnam war, they were into the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, they started the first vegetarian restaurant in Pittsburgh.
Justin Sane
#36. Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.
James Meredith
#37. I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I'll never forget my librarian.
John Lewis
#38. 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
#39. In the summer of 1964, my sister and I went to South Ballston, Virginia, to stay with my aunt and her kids. They passed the civil rights bill that summer; my cousins were so happy because now they could swim in the pool.
Edward P. Jones
#40. I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.
Dick Gephardt
#41. My mother saw nothing inconsistent in her traditional desire to look after her husband and children and her radical politics. She began her civil rights work before most people had ever heard the word 'feminism,' and in those early years, she was focused on racial justice.
Ezekiel Emanuel
#42. There was an aura about King that was unforgettable. I seem him now in my mind's eye: collected, peaceful, calm. He was in his element and totally in command of himself and the situation.
Junius Williams
#43. I was so hungry to learn. My mother drilled this into me. When you read,she said, you know--and you can help yourself and others.
Carole Boston Weatherford
#44. We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King's success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.
Jimmy Carter
#45. The nation's government has just handed me the bill that grants us our civil rights. I am receiving it before you, certain that I am accepting this on behalf of all Argentinean women, and I can feel my hands tremble with joy as they grasp the laurel proclaiming victory.
Evita Peron
#46. My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.
Janis Ian
#47. I was raised in Arizona, and I went to public school, and the extent of my knowledge of the civil-rights movement was the story of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder how much my generation knows.
Emma Stone
#48. I'm hurting because the color of my skin makes me perfect for their target practice.
R H Sin
#49. No Republican questions or disputes civil rights. I have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the civil rights act.
Rand Paul
#50. I explained to the president that I've been pleased with my conversations with the Attorney General and Civil Rights Division regarding their helpful understanding that they aren't taking over this investigation, but are conducting a parallel review of the events that led to Michael Brown's death.
Roy Blunt
#51. Get off of my shoulders. The foundation has been laid, now its time for you to build on it and get to work.
Amelia Boynton Robinson
#52. I came at age in the '60s, and initially my hopes and dreams were invested in politics and the movements of the time - the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement. I worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign for president as a teenager in California and the night he was killed.
David Talbot
#53. I feel happy that twenty-five years of vicissitudes in my fortune, and firmness in my principles, warrant me in repeating here that if, to recover her rights, it is sufficient for a nation to resolve to do so, she can preserve them only by rigid fidelity to her civil and moral duties.
Marquis De Lafayette
#54. The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.
Jonathan Lethem
#55. I was in the kitchen drinking coffee when I heard Coretta cry, "Martin, Martin, come quickly!" I put down my cup and ran toward the living room. As I approached the front window Coretta pointed joyfully to a slowly moving bus: "Darling, it's empty!
Martin Luther King Jr.
#56. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, 'Hey man, we don't go for that anymore.'
Al Gore
#57. Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.
John Ridley
#58. It is my hope that the pagan media and academic establishment will implode on the force of its own corruption and stagnation.
Samuel Bowers
#59. Yes. My mother was and still is a Folk Singer. She was very involved in the political movements for Unions and Civil rights. She sang with Pete Seeger among others. My father was an Actor.
Vicki Sue Robinson
#60. Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda,
Alveda King
#61. My life is about being a civil rights activist. That's my life. Whoever you are, everyone, we either have civil rights or we don't. It's for everyone.
Pauley Perrette
#62. If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.
Harvey Milk
#63. I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
#64. Throughout my years championing for civil rights, analyzing politics and advocating on behalf of the voiceless, I am disturbed the most when harmless children suffer because of politics or detrimental policies.
Al Sharpton
#65. In my judgment, the slogan "black power" and what has been associated with it has set the civil rights movement back considerably in the United States over the period of the last several months.
Robert Kennedy
#66. John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.
Russell Banks
#67. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#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. Anyone who said he wasn't afraid during the civil rights movement was either a liar or without imagination. I was scared all the time. My hands didn't shake but inside I was shaking.
James L. Farmer Jr.
#70. My friends in the Congress, I have known Coretta King since I went south during the civil rights movement as a lawyer. She was a vibrant, consistent, totally dedicated partner with her husband.
John Conyers
#71. I feel that my father's greatest legacy was the people he inspired to get involved in public service and their communities, to join the Peace Corps, to go into space. And really that generation transformed this country in civil rights, social justice, the economy and everything.
Caroline Kennedy
#72. The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important 'cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.
Al Franken
#73. Well, my personal mission statement is that we want marriage equality in all 50 states. We want it not to be a state-by-state issue. We don't want it to be something the majority is voting on. I don't think the civil rights of any minority should be in the hands of any majority.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
#74. Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.
Natasha Trethewey
#75. Rarely in my 45 years as a civil rights lawyer have I been so angry about an injustice as I am about what happened to Billy Ray Johnson.
Morris Dees
#76. 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
#77. We start 'The Butler' in June and that's incredibly exciting for me because I get to work with the amazing Forest Whitaker again. It's a phenomenal script and a great, great role - I play his son. Oprah Winfrey is his wife and my mother. My character is a radical civil rights activist.
David Oyelowo
