Skip to main content

The Civil Rights Movement Quotes

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

Let me go over this again on the reclaiming the civil rights movement. People of faith that believe that you have an equal right to justice - that is the essence. And if it's not the essence, then we've been sold a pack of lies. The essence is everyone deserves a shot - the content of character, not the color of skin.
- Glenn Beck

Senator John Stennis:
The civil rights movement did more to free the white man that the black man.... It freed my soul.
- Joe Biden

During the 60's, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.
- Joe Biden

I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that now whites are more open to being represented by people of color or people who are women or, again, non-traditional candidates.
- Carol Moseley Braun

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.
- Carol Moseley Braun

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

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

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

Mrs. Parks was a shy, soft spoken woman who was uncomfortable being revered as a symbol of the civil rights movement. She only hoped to inspire young people to achieve great things.
- Jim Costa

The civil rights movement would experience many important victories, but Rosa Parks will always be remembered as its catalyst.
- Jim Costa

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.
- Sammy Davis Jr

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

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

another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country's founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.
- Barack Obama

The tragedy of the civil rights movement is that just as it achieved the beginning of the end of racial segregation, white educated elites became swept up in the glamour of the sexual revolution.
- Maggie Gallagher

I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement.
- Henry Louis Gates

I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement.
- Danny Glover

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

Eyes is the attempt to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to create an emotional, intellectual constituency. But what do you do after that? The black community doesn't have institutions that pick up such moments and preserve them.
- Henry Hampton

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.
- Bell Hooks

The civil rights movement in the United States was about the same thing, about equality of treatment for all sections of the people, and that is precisely what our movement was about.
- John Hume

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

As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs.
- Jon Meacham

What drew me to both study and activism was the formative experience of the civil rights movement.
- David E Price

The Klan had used fear, intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over African-Americans who sought justice and equality and it sought to respond to the young workers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the same way.
- Charles Rangel

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon

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

I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon

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

It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights Movement and the artistic revolution that was becoming a part of jazz.
- Archie Shepp

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

Well, it's the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?
- Russell Simmons

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

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.
- James T Walsh

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bass Player Quotes

I always just wanted to be the singer or the bass player in the band. I'd love to have a band, where I was obviously the singer, but where it wasn't me, it wasn't my name. - Bryan Adams In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead. - David Amram I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally. - Ken Burns Jack Bruce, as soon as I saw him, it changed me. I didn't even know what bass players did until I saw Cream. - Geezer Butler Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it. - Stanley Clarke There are a lot of people who can do it on the guitar and sing at the same t...

Fat Person Quotes

She was convinced that she was anorexic, because every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person. - Terry Pratchett I sensed immediately that he'd once been overweight. He moved with a fat person's tiptoey apology. - Jennifer Egan I feel self-conscious calling my cat fat in front of a fat person, considering I'm skinny and inconsiderate. - Jarod Kintz I call myself a FFP: former fat person, and when you're an FFP, you will always see in yourself what people used to bully you for. - Kelly Osbourne Well you know, it's true that as a fat person I run a greater risk of heart disease, diabetes, and a number of other things. But guess what? The amount of that risk is almost infinitessimal! - Daniel Pinkwater