Top 100 Rosa Quotes
#1. Rosa!" Sally says. "The police are here to help you, not to hear a lecture on comparative murder rates.
Justine Larbalestier
#2. I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.
Stephen Colbert
#3. If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Ramsey Clark
#4. Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths - until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.
Vladimir Nabokov
#5. The old life is gone, my days are new,
but time is still a mystery
of wishes, and this sad, confusing fragrance.
- Rosa
Margarita Engle
#6. She did not begin to tell real lies until Rosa was in hospital suffering that filthy rot that left her all eaten out inside, as light and fragile as a pine log infested with white ant
Peter Carey
#7. ... Pfiffikus, whose vulgarity made Rosa Hubermann look like a wordsmith and a saint.
Markus Zusak
#8. Rosa Hubermann was sitting on the edge of the bed with her husband's accordion tied to her chest. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She did not move. She didn't ever appear to be breathing.
Markus Zusak
#9. Rosa Lee," he said, "with the privilege to vote - to choose - we can change things, even put our own people in power.
Linda Williams Jackson
#10. [Rosa Louise] Parks used to say, "Everybody looks at me because I sat down once in Montgomery, but the real hero is a woman named Septima Clark."She created the Citizenship Schools [where civil-rights activists taught basic literacy and political education classes].
Marian Wright Edelman
#11. Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream." And that's it!
Andrew Aydin
#12. The campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill has narrowed the choices down to four finalists. The four finalists are Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads.
Conan O'Brien
#13. My Sister Rosa was bumped from the schedule. None of my books has ever been bumped before. It freaked me out.
Justine Larbalestier
#14. Fear would have told the Wright brothers not to fly. Fear would have told Rosa Parks to change seats. Fear would have told Steve Jobs that people hate touchscreens.
Jon Acuff
#15. Max, Hans, and Rosa I cannot account for, but I know that Liesel Meminger was thinking that if the bombs ever landed on Himmel Street, not only did Max have less chance of survival than everyone else, but he would die completely alone.
Markus Zusak
#16. But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.
Charles Dickens
#17. 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
#18. Rosa Parks showed us all that one little person can make a whole bunch of noise without so much as a whisper. She showed the world that the color of your skin shouldn't determine what part of the bus you sit in ... as you ride through life.
Richard Pryor
#19. She was by no means one of the great refusers. Not an existentialist hero, or a Rosa Parks, or even a Bartleby.
Renata Adler
#20. Speak to me, Rosa. Look this way just once, over here Rosa, where I am watching.
John Fante
#21. Women's freedom is the sign of social freedom. Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
#22. Rosa had achieved the sort of serene and confident happiness that Tamsin had never really known. She was connected to Roberto in a way that made Tamsin long for something similar. A man with whom she could share all parts of her life, someone to be her equal and her inspiration.
Emily Arden
#23. Rosa Parks' entire career has been one as working as a civil rights activist.
Douglas Brinkley
#24. I lived that year on top of a wooden tower in an area east of Santa Rosa known as the Valley of the Moon.
Frederick Weisel
#25. As they went out of the room Rosa turned to look at Tommy and had an impulse to go back, to get into bed with him and just lie there for a while feeling that deep longing, that sense of missing him desperately, that came over her whenever she held him sleeping in her arms.
Michael Chabon
#26. In the struggle against sexual discrimination on Wall Street, Pamela K. Martens is a latter-day Rosa Parks - a woman who, metaphorically speaking, refused to sit in the back of the bus.
Gary Weiss
#27. Ray Bradbury has a vacation house in Palm Springs, California, in the desert at the base of the Santa Rosa mountains. It's a Rat Pack-era affair, with a chrome-and-turquoise kitchen and a small swimming pool in back.
Sam Weller
#28. Whereas Rosa's lips were full and lush, her mother's were thin and pinched in an expression that hinted at pain so long suppressed and hidden that in hiding from the world, the pain had become second nature.
Michael Rowe
#29. If Willie Nelson had been Rosa Parks, there never would have been a civil rights movement in this country, because he refuses to leave the back of the bus.
Kinky Friedman
#30. I went to jail 44 times. I've been beaten and left for dead on the side of the road fighting for freedom ... Yet Rosa Parks is better known in history than Ralph David Abernathy. Why is that?
Ralph Abernathy
#31. Some people know Rosa Parks, they know Daisy Bates in Arkansas, but every ... Ruby Doris Smith, Diane Nash, countless individuals.
John Lewis
#32. An attribute of Rosa Hubermann, she was a good woman for a crisis.
Markus Zusak
#33. Leilani smiles. I'm surprised she knows how. For a second i'm certain she's isn't like Rosa
Justine Larbalestier
#34. We want to make certain that every American who stood in silent tribute to Rosa Parks hopes that the Sepreme Court Judge will break silence and speak out clearly for the civil rights that define our unity as a nation.
Dick Durbin
#35. Rosa Parks inspired many. She will not be forgotten.
John Shimkus
#36. The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single, simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry.
William J. Clinton
#37. The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute accepts people of any race. We don't discriminate against anyone. We teach people to reach their highest potential. I set examples by the way I lead my life.
Rosa Parks
#38. I hope that, reading 'Rosa,' people will remember their own family and friends and talk about what they did and did not do.
Nikki Giovanni
#39. Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly.
Jay-Z
#40. Let me speak frankly: separate but equal is a fraud. It is the language that tried to push Rosa Parks to the back of the bus. It is the motif that determined that black and white people could not possibly drink from the same water fountain, eat at the same table or use the same toilets.
David Lammy
#41. My experience with My Sister Rosa showed me, once again, that I have a much easier time of it if I sell my novels after I finish them, not before. I'm lucky that I'm in a position where I'm able to do that.
Justine Larbalestier
#42. I understand," he said. "Please let me know." He meant it to sound patient and cooperative, but somehow it came out as abject. Rosa started to laugh. She put her arms around him, and he rubbed the smeared lipstick into her cheeks until it was gone. "How
Michael Chabon
#43. People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don't do this and don't do that. But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations.
Rodney King
#44. Rosa reports the engagement of her niece in 1912 to a nice young man without a name. It may therefore be that the last descendants of the Luxemburg family are living somewhere in England.
John Peter Nettl
#45. Carl Barks and Don Rosa are two of my favorite cartoonists ever.
Gene Luen Yang
#46. There will come a time when the gun owners of America, the law-abiding gun owners of America, will be the Rosa Parks and we will sit down on the front seat of the bus, case closed,
Ted Nugent
#47. To Amalfitano, Jordi seemed a shy and formal boy. Rosa liked his silence, which she mistook for thoughtfulness when it was really just a symptom of the confusion raging in his head.
Roberto Bolano
#48. Anybody who is born in Santa Rosa must turn out to be either an artist or a poet, for the spirit of the hills gets into your blood out there,
Robert Ripley
#49. Rosa Parks will be remembered for her lasting contributions to society. Her legacy lives on in the continued struggle for civil rights around the world. She will be missed.
Jim Costa
#50. I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm's - raised and fisted or Martin's - open and asking or James's - curled around a pen. I do not know if these hands will be Rosa's or Ruby's gently gloved and fiercely folded calmly in a lap, on a desk, around a book, ready to change the world . . .
Jacqueline Woodson
#51. Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.
David Cameron
#52. When you hear the voice of Rosa Ponselle, you hear a fountain of melody blessed by the Lord.
Mary Garden
#53. For once Yancy didn't mind driving to Miami. Dr. Rosa Campesino had agreed to meet for lunch. On the Eighteen-Mile Stretch he got stuck behind a minivan with a CHOOSE LIFE bumper sticker. "Choose the accelerator! How's that for starters?" Yancy was shouting, pounding on the horn.
Carl Hiaasen
#54. One of the things about Steve Jobs is that he gives us an opportunity to look at the disjuncture between that world and the world he claimed that Apple represented, the "Think different" world of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Gandhi.
Alex Gibney
#55. Make no mistake, the woman (Rosa) had a heart. She had a bigger one than people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving.
Marcus Zusak
#56. No, no, sometimes a person feels to be alone."
"If you're alone too much," Persky said, "you think too much."
"Without a life," Rosa answered, "a person lives where they can. If all they got is thoughts, that's where they live."
"You ain't got a life?"
"Thieves took it.
Cynthia Ozick
#57. In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.
Jesse Jackson
#58. The real meaning of courage was the personal sacrifice of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
Pete Seeger
#59. Fact, you could say that Rosa Hubermann had a face decorated with constant fury. That was how the creases were made in the cardboard texture of her complexion.
Markus Zusak
#60. Only because you're injured," she said, and kissed him again. He pulled her close. "How's this going to work with all these stitches? Do I have to keep standing?" "Well," whispered Rosa, "I suppose you could kneel." Yancy lifted her sundress. "You're the doctor.
Carl Hiaasen
#61. If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in the bus in Montgomery, she'd still be standing.
Mary Frances Berry
#62. Why did you push her ?' Rosa screams again. I realise she's pointing at me.
Justine Larbalestier
#63. I was stunned to find out there had never been a serious, scholarly biography ever written on Rosa Parks.
Douglas Brinkley
#64. If she didn't take her own life, that meant Rosa would be with her daughter in the afterlife.
K.A. Tucker
#65. The civil rights movement would experience many important victories, but Rosa Parks will always be remembered as its catalyst.
Jim Costa
#66. Today's college students demand a self-segregating "safe space". Rosa Parks spinning in her grave.
A.E. Samaan
#67. Rosa Parks was the queen mother of a movement whose single act of heroism sparked the movement for freedom, justice and equality. Her greatest contribution is that she told us a regular person can make a difference.
Marc Morial
#68. Rosa Luxemburg was - still is for me - a great personal and intellectual heroine. Her analysis of Leninism and capitalism and social democracy are all worth reading. I wouldn't consider anyone truly politically literate if they hadn't given her work at least some study.
Christopher Hitchens
#69. Yes, us. And the vow I just made. Hell, Rosa, it's about your home branded on my body.
Ellen Connor
#70. Rosa Parks' courage, determination, and tenacity continue to be an inspiration to all those committed to non-violent protest and change nearly half a century later.
Bob Filner
#71. The first thing I do when I wake up is take a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, and vitamins, and then I look at my dogs. I have three dogs, Rosa, Toto, and Mimmo, all Labradors.
Stefano Gabbana
#72. No matter how many times we prove otherwise, the men don't seem to believe we can take care of ourselves." "Which is ridiculous," Rosa agreed, "Especially when you consider how many settler women over there on their frontier are doing just that.
Mercedes Lackey
#73. In France it was Joan of Arc; in the Crimea it was Florence Nightingale; in the deep south there was Rosa Parks; in India there was Mother Teresa and in Florida there was Katherine Harris.
Larry Gatlin
#74. Ma vie piu lieta, piu ridente a belle/ ardisce aprire il seno al sol la rosa ... which express that the rose is more daring then the humble violet!
Marina Fiorato
#75. He couldn't stay if she wasn't his to claim, to trust, to love. No matter how much Chris wanted to stay, Rosa Cortez was his last link to humanity. He wouldn't settle again.
Ellen Connor
#76. There was something unmistakably exultant about the mess that Rosa had made. Her bedroom-studio was at once the canvas, journal, museum, and midden of her life. She did not "decorate" it; she infused it.
Michael Chabon
#77. Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi - all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to.
Susan Cain
#78. 'Bless Me, Ultima' is quite autobiographical in the sense that I was writing a story about my childhood, my hometown where I grew up, Santa Rosa, New Mexico, on Old Highway 66 and the Pecos River. So a great deal of that environment, landscape, people, got thrown in the novel.
Rudolfo Anaya
#80. Killing things shouldn't make you happy, Rosa. That's why they're worried.
Justine Larbalestier
#81. No, that's wrong," Rosa said, pointing at Dex who was sliding his fist in and out of the puppet, making moaning noises. "Ooh, yeah, you like that don't you.
Anonymous
#82. Rosa Luxemburg maintained that the capitalist system can keep up its rate of investment (and therefore its profits) only so long as it is expanding geographically.
Joan Robinson
#83. There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons.
Douglas Brinkley
#84. A president can be unpopular for good reasons. You know, I'm not always on the side that the people are right, for God's sake. But, you know, he's not popular when he goes overseas. He couldn't go to Rosa Parks' funeral.
Bill Maher
#86. Her continuity - you know, if you connect Harriet Tubman, who died in 1913, to Rosa Parks, born in 1913, you get this extraordinary spectrum of the African-American experience.
Douglas Brinkley
#87. I am Classic Rock Revisited. I revisit it every waking moment of my life because it has the spirit and the attitude and the fire and the middle finger. I am Rosa Parks with a Gibson guitar.
Ted Nugent
#88. Le spine della rosa sono nacoste dal fiore: the thorns of the rose are hidden by the bloom.
Lynda La Plante
#89. Didn't anyone ask you where your parents are?"
"They asked. Especially about my parents."
"What did you tell them?"
"I said I ate them."
"Jesus, Rosa.
Justine Larbalestier
#90. Let's go beyond the Trinity of African-American History. There are so many more to learn about other than Harriett Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks.
Karimah Grayson
#91. At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political.
Douglas Sirk
#92. Rosa Parks was a woman of strength, conviction, and morality. Her action on December 1, 1955, to defy the law made her a leading figure in our nation's civil rights history.
John Shimkus
#93. I want you, Rosa,' Antonio said, turning to her. 'I want you with your scars and your suffering. You are my wife and everything that has happened to you only makes you more precious to me.
Belinda Alexandra
#94. I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement.
Douglas Brinkley
#95. There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement.
Marian Wright Edelman
#96. It seemed to Rosa Lublin that the whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real life. Here they had nothing. They were all scarecrows, blown about under the murdering sunball with empty ribcages.
Cynthia Ozick
#97. His muscles flexed as he stood, and Rosa couldn't prevent herself from watching with veiled admiration. He was certainly a very beautiful man. She looked away in embarrassment, worried she might say or do something inappropriate.
Emily Arden
#98. She made a visual inventory of the disaster and confirmed that the girl was curled up like a snail, her head hidden between her arms: terrified but intact. "My God!" Rosa Cabarcas exclaimed. "What I wouldn't have given for a love like this!
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#99. How are you?"
Rosa shrugged her shoulders. "My sister turned into a giant snake last night. And your cousin Tano - "
"Second cousin."
"He was there too. He was a tiger. I recognized him from his eyes. Then I fainted." She looked at him. "How does that sound?
Kai Meyer
#100. Rosa leaned forward. 'We don't have the least idea what life can be.'
'We don't?'
'No.'
'Then how do we find out?'
Rosa wiped tears from Dante's face with her fingers. The gesture was firm as it was tender. 'We plunge.
Carolina De Robertis
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
