Quotes About Injustice

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. When oppressed people willingly accept their oppression they only serve to give the oppressor a convenient justification for his acts.

My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him. The question arose in my mind: How could I love a race of people who hated me and who had been responsible for breaking me up with one of my best childhood friends? This was a great question in my mind for a number of years.

I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance. I saw further that the underlying purpose of segregation was to oppress and exploit the segregated, not simply to keep them apart. Justice and equality I saw, would never come while segregation remained, because the basic purpose of segragation was to perpetuate injustice and inequality.

Whatever measure of influence I had as a result of the importance which the world attaches to the Nobel Peace Prize would have to be used to bring the philosophy of nonviolence to all the world's people who grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice.

It is disappointment with the Christian church that appears to be more white than Christian, and with many white clergymen who prefer to remain silent behind the security of stained-glass windows.

Morals cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin. We must depend on religion and education to alter the errors of the heart and mind; but meanwhile it is an immoral act to compel a man to accept injustice until another man's heart is set straight.

What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?

One old domestic, an influential matriarch to many young relatives in Montgomery, was asked by her wealthy employer, "Isn't this bus boycott terrible?" The old lady responded: "Yes, ma'am, it sure is. And I just told all my young'uns that this kind of thing is white folks' business and we just stay off the buses till they get this whole thing settled.

Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

To this day the white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty if not of color. They are chained by the weight of discrimination, though its badge of degradation does not mark them. It corrupts their lives, frustrates their opportunities and withers their education. In one sense it is more evil for them, because it has confused so many by prejudice that they have supported their own oppressors.

History has shown that, like a virulent disease germ, racism can grow and destroy nations.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

I am tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody, injured and jumped on, along the Jericho Roads of life.

It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up for me.

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.

First, they came for the Communists And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And by then there was no one left to speak out for me

Hitler had been a pioneer of hunting bans. Gerta often wondered how the Führer could consider killing foxes unsporting but not have an issue with killing fellow human Jews.

Unfortunately, Sir Gerald, people rarely get what they deserve in this life. Perhaps that is why we have had to invent a heaven. - Miss Blythe, A Precious Jewel

The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account

For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.

The crimes of a caligula shrink to insignificance compared to the havoc wrought by Torquemada.

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.