Quotes About Social justice

Roosevelt vio que los derechos protegen a la democracia del embate de la envidia. Nadie puede envidiar de su prójimo lo que toda persona tiene por derecho. Elevar ciertas bondades económicas clave a la categoría de derechos socava la envidia, al menos hasta cierto punto. Una de las razones por las que vemos tanta envidia es porque las personas no se sienten seguras en lo que a la base económica de sus vidas respecta.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.

We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.

A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

My friends, we cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or elsewhere if we are willing to trade the future of our children for our personal safety or comfort. Moreover, we must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil. ... 'Put up thy sword.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.

Ik raakte ervan overtuigd dat niet meewerken aan een slechte zaak net zo goed een morele verplichting inhoudt als meewerken aan iets goeds.

Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism

Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but... groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

I have a dream that my four little children will not be judged by the color of the skin. I have a dream today that we will overcome someday.

Geweldloos verzet kon volgens hem alleen vruchten afwerpen als de groepen waartegen het verzet werd gepleegd over enig moreel besef beschikten

The amazing aftermath of Birmingham, the sweeping Negro Revolution, revealed to people all over the land that there are no outsiders in all these fifty states of America. When a police dog buried his fangs in the ankle of a small child in Birmingham, he buried his fangs in the ankle of every American. The bell of man's inhumanity to man does not toll for any one man. It tolls for you, for me, for all of us.

This was not true for the Negro. There were two and one-half times as many jobless Negroes as whites in 1963, and their median income was half that of the white man. Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice, but tolerated or ignored economic injustice. But the Negro knows that these two evils have a malignant kinship.

Racial injustice around the world. Poverty. War. When man solves these three great problems he will have squared his moral progress with his scientific progress. And, more importantly, he will have learned the practical art of living in harmony.

A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present.

It is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he should lift himself up by his own bootstraps. It is even worse to tell a man to lift himself up by his own bootstraps when somebody is standing on the boot....I had to tell him finally that nobody else in this country has lifted themselves by their own bootstraps alone, so why expect the black man to do it?

It isn't enough to talk about integration without coming to see that integration is more than something to be dealt with in esthetic or romantic terms. I think in the past all too often we did it that way. We talked of integration in romantic or esthetic terms and it ended up as merely adding color to a still predominantly white power structure.

Floods of consumer goods, superhighways, supermarkets, and Telstars [satellites] do not obscure the existence of shameful prejudice.

The relatively privileged Negro will never be what he ought to be until the underprivileged Negro is what he ought to be. The salvation of the Negro middle class is ultimately dependent upon the salvation of the Negro masses.

A religion that professes a concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them , is a spiritually moribund religion