Quotes by Civil Rights Activists - Page 3

Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
Malcolm X
God doesn't make orange juice God makes oranges.
Jesse Jackson
We have to improve life not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system. But also for and with those who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity.
Dorothy Height
Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you - how do you think I feel to have to tell you, 'We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights - and you've got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.' What did we do, who preceded you? I'll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don't you make the same mistake we made....
Malcolm X
I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...
Malcolm X
Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.
Malcolm X
So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.
Malcolm X
At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.
A. Philip Randolph
I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.
Malcolm X
To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude towards Afrika becomes more positive, your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also becomes more positive...
Malcolm X
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
Josephine Baker
Even Samson, the world's strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. she was the one whose words hurt him.
Malcolm X
No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That's already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.
Dick Gregory
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
Malcolm X
It has hindered where it might have helped; it has been evasive when it was morally bound to be forthright; it has separated believers on the basis of color, although it has declared its mission to be a universal brotherhood under Jesus Christ. Christian love is the white man's love for himself and for his race.
Malcolm X
You are either free or not free
Malcolm X
Of all the injuries inflicted by racism on people of colour the most corrosive is the wound within the internalized racism that leads some victims at unspeakable cost to their own sense of self to embrace the values of their oppressors.
H. Jack Geiger
But let’s not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti-Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn’t 't pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti-Semite.
Malcolm X
You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.
Malcolm X
It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.
Malcom X
Hope is a song in a weary throat.
Pauli Murray
Yo, múltiple, como en contradicción
Julia de Burgos
O black and unknown bards of long ago How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How in your darkness did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?
James Weldon Johnson
Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant. When you want strong coffee, you ask for black coffee. If you want it light, you want it weak, integrated with white milk. Just like these Negroes who weaken themselves and their race by this integrating and intermixing with whites. If you want bread with no nutritional value, you ask for white bread. All the good that was in it has been bleached out of it, and it will constipate you. If you want pure flour, you ask for dark flour, whole-wheat flour. If you want pure sugar, you want dark sugar.
Malcolm X
I won't say I'm out of condition now - but I even puff going downstairs.
Dick Gregory
Confrontation is not bad. Goodness is supposed to confront evil.
Fred Shuttlesworth
If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart.
Jesse Jackson
Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
Malcolm X