Rights & Freedom

"If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgment we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives."

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union... two hundred and twenty-two years ago, a group of men gathered and issued that document."

"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read."

"Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold... may change. Today it is fair. Tomorrow it may be clouded."

"We are the Rainbow People of God! We are free, all of us, Black and white together!"

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home."

"The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition."

"Tierra y Libertad! (Land and Liberty!)"

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim."

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."

"Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great... it would have been all right."

"I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not."

"No Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it is by struggle that it has been won, a day-to-day struggle... a struggle in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering."

"One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world."

"It's gotta be the ballot or the bullet. If we don't cast a ballot, then we're going to have to be casting a bullet."

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

"There is no salvation for India unless you strip yourselves of this jewelry and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India."

"Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another."

"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

"An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab."

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom."

"Prejudice against women in this country is subtle, pervasive, and institutionalized."

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches... Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?"

"It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union."

"Y'all better quiet down! I have been to jail. I have been beaten. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation."

"Women are citizens, and no State has the right to make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

"So much misery condensed in so little room is more than the human imagination had ever before conceived."