Quotes About Civil rights

No state, as a matter of public policy, should turn back the clock on progress by, in effect, legalizing and relitigating the same types of discriminatory laws and debates that took America centuries to overcome.

I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

As members of the oldest civil rights organization in the nation, NRA members know tyranny when we see it.

The ultimate good in a liberal state is liberty.

You cannot hear the name Martin Luther King, Jr., and not think of death. You might hear the words 'I have a dream,' but they will doubtlessly only serve to underscore an image of a simple motel balcony, a large man made small, a pool of blood. For as famous as he may have been in life, it is - and was - death that ultimately defined him.

I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.

A militarized police force facing down innocent protesters with sniper rifles and machine guns is totally unacceptable in America.

The War on Terror has been and continues to be, above all, a war on the most basic liberties and political safeguards that we're all taught are what distinguishes the US and keeps it free.

Liberalism isn't quite as liberal as it pretends to be. And it goes through my adventures with the FBI during the anti-war period and the civil rights period.

I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.

What started as a struggle for equal rights and a more color-blind society has turned into a major industry--the victim industry. Like the rest of the Left establishment, today's black civil-rights establishment--the Misery Merchants, as I call them--work to propagate divisions and hopelessness, with the single goal of holding onto the money, power, and prestige that come from leading the supposedly downtrodden.

H]ate-crime legislation was enacted to give special protections to select constituencies, and, as practiced, it makes certain people more valuable than others in the eyes of the law--exactly the kind of thinking that civil rights, feminist, and gay-rights groups wanted to combat.

Black people got mad about being treated like crap. Bad cops got mad 'cause they were getting called on their shit all of a sudden. Good cops got mad 'cause they were the bad guys when they hadn't done anything.

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

She also wondered why she wasn't able to care more about the important things happening in the world. There was the Vietnam War. She knew boys who had died, and there was always Dr. King, cold in the ground. Even though Willie Mae hadn't been bitten by a dog, she had been in Birmingham when the German shepherds were let loose. And where had Mother been when all of this was going on? She was busy learning to be a wife.

As a life-long liberal who has engaged in protests against the government and for civil rights, I am saddened at efforts by some of my fellow liberals to silence commencement speakers with whom they might disagree on some issues.

Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation.

Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks.

After years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless.

From the new hate crimes law to the repeal of DOMA and 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' to the emerging popular support for marriage equality, we are making progress at breakneck speed. As someone who has dedicated most of my career to civil rights law, I am deeply moved by this sea change and proud to have done my part.

'Malcolm X' is my favorite Spike Lee movie.

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down.

The argument about marriage equality will one day seem as arcane and shocking to us as the fact that Rosa Parks had to get up and go to the back of the bus.

When I was born here in Gulfport in 1966, my parents' interracial marriage was still illegal. And it was very hard to drive around town with my parents, to be out in public with my parents.