Civil Rights Quotes - Page 12

• The successes of the LGBT civil rights movement and the more prominent role openly gay people are playing in the public eye has actually turned up the temperature in middle schools and high schools for queer kids.

  Dan Savage

  School, Kids, Eye

  "Stranger To Stranger: Dan Savage". Interview with Christopher Frizzelle, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 3, 2012.

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• If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American - our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that.

  Jon Stewart

  Rights, September 11, Liberty

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• 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

  Kings, School, Rights

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• No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Good Man, Weakness

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7: 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814”, p.648, Princeton University Press

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• Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Law, Natural

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.143, Cambridge University Press

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• The Cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Liberty, Causes, Defeat

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.136, Fordham Univ Press

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• Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.

  James Monroe

  Religious, Rights, Government

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• The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance - a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms - A Nation of Finger Pointers.

  Lance Morrow

  America, Police, Hammers

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• We need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism. We need not choose between our most deeply held values, and keeping this nation safe.

  Barack Obama

  Fighting, Years, Needs

  'Countdown with Keith Olbermann', www.nbcnews.com. June 19, 2008.

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• I also wish that the Pledge of Allegiance were directed at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as it is when the President takes his oath of office, rather than to the flag and the nation

  Carl Sagan

  Rights, Oath Of Office, Wish

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.546, Ballantine Books

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• The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.

  Wendell Willkie

  Equality, Class, Doe

  An American Program ch. 2 (1944)

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• You reached your level, you don't want any more. We asked ten years ago, we were askin' with the Panthers, we were askin' in the Civil Rights Movement. Now those who were askin' are all dead or in jail, wo what are we gonna do? And we shouldn't be angry!?

  Tupac Shakur

  Rapper, Rights, Years

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• I spent my entire career trying to protect the Constitution, the civil rights and the civil liberties of American citizens and people who are here lawfully. I, as chair of this commission, would not be a party to any system that I felt was an unpardonable intrusion into the private lives of people. If I felt that what we are recommending would be such an intrusion I can assure you that recommendation would never have seen the light of day, not even as a pilot program.

  Barbara Jordan

  Party, Rights, Light

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• We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.

  W. Reece Smith, Jr.

  Losing, Remember, Lost

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• We have a ways to go here, but elections have consequences ... I think that our Republican colleagues, the Republican National Party, understands this is our new demographic in America as a result of the election. I think they understand if they want to be a national party, they're going to have to deal with this issue. For Latinos and other immigrants, this is the civil rights issue of our time.

  Bob Menendez

  Party, Thinking, Rights

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• As Dr. King said, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It is that creed of the civil rights movement that still motivates us today...So today, we take up the cause of joining arms with our immigrant brothers and sisters in that spirit... to lend a hand to those who confront injustice as a result of a broken immigration system.

  Steven Horsford

  Brother, Kings, Rights

  "Why Immigration Reform Is Part of the Civil Rights Struggle" by Arturo Conde, abcnews.go.com. March 1, 2013.

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• I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Separation Of Church And State, Natural

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (1940). “John Dewey Presents the Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.

  Joshua L. Liebman

  Inspirational, Positive, Acceptance

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• It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Sports, Baseball, Football

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• We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases.

  Adolf Hitler

  Rights, Ideas, Please

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• Public education is the key civil rights issue of the 21st century. Our nation's knowledge-based economy demands that we provide young people from all backgrounds and circumstances with the education and skills necessary to become knowledge workers. If we don't, we run the risk of creating an even larger gap between the middle class and the poor. This gap threatens our democracy, our society and the economic future of America.

  Eli Broad

  Running, Work, Issues

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• I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

  Malcolm X

  Grateful, Men, Thinking

  "The Autobiography of Malcolm X".

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• The clergy ... believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Believe, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1900). “The Life and Writings of ...”

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• The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Men, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.172, Cambridge University Press

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• The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

  James Madison

  Religious, Rights, Liberty

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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