Civil Rights Quotes

Civil rights, the rights of citizenship, are the human rights of personal liberties granted by a nation for all its citizens and encompass guaranteed priviliges and protections which may be written or based on custom. The United States Constitution provides written protections, additionally federal statutes, state constitutions and statutes, and even in local ordinances which can expand civil rights but cannot diminish Constitutional grants. Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class.

Examples of civil rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, amendments and federal statutes are freedom of speech, press, assembly, right to vote, freedom from involuntary servitude (slavery), the right to equality in public places, and prevent discrimination based on a persons race, sex, religion, age, previous condition of servitude, physical limitation, national origin and in some instances sexual preference.

Quotes Index

Justice William J. Brennan -

“The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting. 

Justice William O. Douglas -

“A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.” [William O. Douglas TIME cover]

Frederick Douglass -

“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.” [Frederick Douglass posters]

Alexis de Tocqueville -

“I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.” [de Tocqueville print]

Martin Luther King, Jr. -

"Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple.” Where Do We Go From Here 1967.

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped.”

[MLK Posters]

Malcolm X -

“We don’t go for segregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy; you control your own politics; you control your own society; you control your own everything. You have yours and you control yours; we have ours and we control ours.” Comment 23rd January 1963. [Malcolm X posters]

Abraham Lincoln -

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” [Abraham Lincoln posters]

Hubert Humphrey -

“There are those who say to you - we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.” Speech at Democrat National Convention, 14th July 1948.

Lyndon B. Johnson -

“The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men." Speech, Washington D.C. 6th August 1965

“A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman... They are both... lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.” [LBJ poster]

John Fitzgerald Kennedy -

“There are no ‘white’ or ‘coloured’ signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle." Message to Congress 19th June 1963.

“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue… whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.” Referring to race riots in Alabama in a radio broadcast 11th June 1963. [Kennedy poster]

Harry S Truman -

“Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.” Speech to Congress 6th September 1945. [Truman poster]

Dick Gregory -

“Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.”

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (a founding editor of Ms. magazine) -

“Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.”

“No laborer in the world is expected to work for room, board, and love - except the housewife”

Shirley Chisholm -

“In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism.” [Shirley Chisholm posters]

Will Rogers -

“I have always claimed Americans didn't want a drink as bad as they wanted the right to take a drink if they did happen to want one.” [Will Rogers poster]

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