Civil Rights Quotes

I know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’ I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long, Because […]

Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word human.

There is no constitutional right for any race to be preferred… If discrimination based on race is constitutionally permissible when those who hold the reins can come up with compelling” reasons to justify it, then constitutional guarantees acquire accordion-like quality.

We have got to get it together and understand. People say, ‘It’s not the American way to infringe on civil liberties.’ Well, it’s not the American way to roll over for punks, either.

The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done – the right should make the law.

All I felt was tired. Tired of being pushed around. Tired of seeing the bad treatment and disrespect of children, women and men just because of the color of their skin. Tired of Jim Crow laws. Tired of being oppressed. I was just plain tired. I felt the Lord would give me strength to endure […]

It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy… History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly, at first, then […]

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection – they have many friends and few enemies.

A license cannot be be revoked because a man is red-headed or because he was divorced, except for a calling, if such there be, for which red-headedness or an unbroken marriage may have some rational bearing.

Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.