Civil Rights Leaders Quotes

I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader.

By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.

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.

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.

Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

Missing from the national conversation are voices of pro-immigration reformers and civil rights leaders, who can speak on behalf of those who have no voice.

I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left wing associations.

American civil rights leader, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Lynching is a murder. For the past four hundred years our people have been lynched physically, but now it's done politically. We're lynched politically, we're lynched economically, we're lynched socially, we're lynched in every way that you can imagine.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.

What are you doing for others?

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

Hate is too great a burden to bear.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.