Quotes from Ruby Bridges

Evil isn't prejudiced. It doesn't care what you look like; it just wants a place to rest. It's up to you whether you give it that place.

Schools should be diverse if we are to get past racial differences.

Administrations and administrative faculty work very hard to see that schools are diverse as much as possible.

Every day, I would show up, and there were no kids, just me and my teacher in my classroom. Every day, I would be escorted by marshals past a mob of people protesting and boycotting the school. This went on for a whole year.

Don't follow the path. Go where there is no path and begin the trail. When you start a new trail equipped with courage, strength and conviction, the only thing that can stop you is you!

I was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.

I've seen schools in Detroit where the windows are broken, where there's no heat, and children are sitting with their coats on in class in the middle of a snowstorm. I've also seen schools in California with Olympic-sized swimming pools and cafeterias like five-star restaurants.

I would dream that this coffin had wings, and it would fly around my bed at night, and so it was a dream that happened a lot, and that's what frightened me.

We as African Americans knew that if we wanted to see change, we had to step up to the plate and make that change ourselves. Not everyone comes to that realization in their lives, but thank God Linda Brown's father felt that way.

Wisdom is a gift but has nothing to do with age. That was probably the case with me.

G]ood and evil comes in all shades and colors... evil is not prejudiced.... evil just needs an opportunity to work through you.... All of us, no matter what we look like, we all have a common enemy, and that is evil. If we don't understand that and come together, then evil will win.

We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.

I felt like there was something I needed to do - speaking to kids and sharing my story with them and helping them understand racism has no place in the minds and hearts of children.

I believe that we have to come together, and we have to rely on the goodness of each other.

Once my school was integrated, and I was there with white kids and a few black kids, it really didn't matter to us what we looked like.

We have tolerance, respect, and equality in our written laws but not in the hearts of some of our people.

The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry's class was the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to teach us all: Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper.

What I do remember about first grade and that year was that it was very lonely. I didn't have any friends, and I wasn't allowed to go to the cafeteria or play on the playground. What bothered me most was the loneliness in school every day.

It's not who you're going to sit beside at school that matters now: it's what resources will your school have.

My family - my mother and father had gone through such a hard time that by the time I graduated from sixth grade, they were separated.

You cannot look at a person and judge him or her by the color of their skin.

I want to inspire kids.

Kids really don't care about what their friends look like.

Somehow, it always worked. Kneeling at the side of my bed and talking to the Lord made everything okay.