Civil Rights Quotes to Inspire and Motivate

Motivational Civil Rights Quotes

Do feuds ever end?
Only when both sides shake hands,
and agree that there is no winner, no loser,
only people who have wearied of fighting
and desire to live in peace.
For many years, Northern Ireland was locked
in a murderous and seemingly unending feud.
The key to ending the feud was a shared commitment
that peace was more important than vengeance.
That is always the choice to be made.
The organizers of an April 10, 2009
joint Protestant-Catholic commemoration
of the Northern Ireland dead,
comprised of members of the once-outlawed Sinn Fein
as well as their once-avowed enemies,
referred to, "the terrible, random nature
of death in war and civil conflict."
Some lessons have been learned, many more remain.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

Property is intended to serve life,
and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect,
it has no personal being.
It is part of the earth man walks on.
It is not man.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The highest result of education is tolerance.
Long ago men fought and died for their faith;
but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, -
the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren
and their rights of conscience.
- Helen Keller

Rights that do not flow from duty
well performed are not worth having.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent
and unalienable rights of man.
- Thomas Jefferson

There is no person in this room whose basic rights
are not involved in any successful defiance
to the carrying out of court orders.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

America did not invent human rights.
In a very real sense, it is the other way around.
Human rights invented America.
- Jimmy Carter

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule,
where fifty-one percent of the people
may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing
and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

A Bill of Rights is what the people are
entitled to against every government,
and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
- Thomas Jefferson

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy,
because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.
- Jimmy Carter

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle,
that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail,
that will to be rightful must be reasonable;
that the minority possess their equal rights,
which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
- Thomas Jefferson

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival,
liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness
is a planet whose resources are devoted
to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
- Jimmy Carter

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen
who would protect the rights and privileges of free people
and who would preserve what is
good and fruitful in our national heritage.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will
within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add "within the limits of the law"
because law is often but the tyrant's will,
and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
- Thomas Jefferson

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth,
that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ...
Be vigilant about your rights.
Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small,
no matter how marginal, are violated,
your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History,
University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks
of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series

I am persuaded that the world has been tricked into adopting
some false and most pernicious notions about consistency -
and to such a degree that the average man has
turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely around
and is proud to be "consistent," unchanging, immovable, fossilized,
where it should be his humiliation.
- Mark Twain

I'm actually starting to like more and more people
who have convictions that are unpopular.
Now at what point does an unpopular conviction
interfere with your own human rights?
Forced female circumcision, for instance.
The Catholic Church's stance on contraception.
The list goes on. You know, God has some really weird kids,
and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.
- Bono

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain

The minority is always stronger than the majority,
because the minority is generally formed by those
who really have an opinion.
- Soren Kierkegaard

The majority of men meet with failure
because of their lack of persistence
in creating new plans to take
the place of those which fail.
- Napoleon Hill

In matters of conscience,
the law of the majority has no place.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)

Truth always rests with the minority,
and the minority is always stronger than the majority,
because the minority is generally formed by those
who really have an opinion,
while the strength of a majority is illusory,
formed by the gangs who have no opinion -
and who, therefore, in the next instant
(when it is evident that the minority is the stronger)
assume its opinion... while truth again reverts to a new minority.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Instead of comparing our lot with that
of those who are more fortunate than we are,
we should compare it with the lot
of the great majority of our fellow men.
It then appears that we are among the privileged.
- Helen Keller

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation,
with a right, by the will of its majority,
to bind themselves, but none to
bind the succeeding generation,
more than the inhabitants of another country.
- Thomas Jefferson

Whenever you're in conflict with someone,
there is one factor that can make the difference
between damaging your relationship and deepening it.
That factor is attitude.
- William James

Whenever you are angry, be assured that
it is not only a present evil,
but that you have increased a habit.
- Epictetus

Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job,
tell 'em, Certainly I Can. -
and get busy and find out how to do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Happiness lies in accepting everyone
in our lives EXACTLY as they are.
We cause ourselves untold misery whenever
we believe others to be imperfect and try to change them.
This is the number one rule for a happy relationship.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Be kind whenever possible; and it is always possible.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Whenever God wakes in us, our thinking
becomes clear - nothing is missing.
- St. Thomas Aquinas

Whenever I look at a human face,
I say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whenever I look in the mirror,
I say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We cause ourselves untold misery whenever we believe
others to be imperfect and try to change them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whenever a man or women is truly inspired,
it is because the same One Universal Spirit
is doing the inspiring.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the wedding cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
- Ogden Nash

I can release my "responsibilities",
and be "impractical" whenever I choose.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We disrespect ourselves and our free-will
whenever we say that we NEED to do something.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whenever I date a guy, I think,
"Is this the man I want my children
to spend their weekends with?"
- Rita Rudner

Whenever I feel the need to exercise,
I lie down until it goes away.
- Robert Maynard Hutchins

May God grant you always...
A sunbeam to warm you,
a moonbeam to charm you,
a sheltering Angel so nothing can harm you.
Laughter to you.
Faithful friends near you.
And whenever you pray,
Heaven to hear you.
- Irish Blessing

Love is missing someone whenever you're apart,
but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart.
- Kay Knudsen

Whenever you choose to carry resentment and hatred,
you are shouldering an immense burden that damages
your happiness, and often your health.
Does it matter that your resentment and hatred are "justified?"
Only you suffer - not the person you resent.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices,
a rottenness begins in his conduct.
- Thomas Jefferson

Whenever I look at a human face today,
I will say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
Whenever I look in the mirror today,
I will say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whenever the people are well-informed,
they can be trusted with their own government.
- Thomas Jefferson

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery,
I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
- Abraham Lincoln

Where there is unconditional love,
there is no room for unhappiness.
Whenever I look in the mirror today,
I will say to myself: "That Is The Face Of God."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The will to believe chases out the rational mind,
whenever and wherever the two come into conflict.
- Philip K. Dick

Discourage litigation.
Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can.
As a peacemaker the lawyer has
superior opportunity of being a good man.
There will still be business enough.
- Abraham Lincoln

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation,
whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,
and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose
to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -
and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
- Abraham Lincoln

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming
that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This country, with its institutions,
belongs to the people who inhabit it.
Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government,
they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it,
or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
- Abraham Lincoln

Anger and Danger are intimately intertwined.
An angry person is a dangerous person,
whether that person crosses our path
or whether the angry person is ourself.
To complete the anger/danger cycle,
whenever we feel threatened -
when we believe we are in danger -
we tend to exhibit anger as well as fear.
We look for someone to blame for the dangerous situation,
and direct our anger toward them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Home is our sanctuary, where we:
relax into being ourselves,
play with our inner child,
paint the walls green and pink,
dig in the dirt,
grow something,
love somebody else,
love ourselves even more,
snuggle with a warm blanket on a Sunday afternoon,
hang "go away" on the door whenever we want,
clean and tidy often... or never,
launch from and return to,
are truly ourselves.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson

To live is to choose. But to choose well,
you must know who you are and what you stand for,
where you want to go and why you want to get there.
- Kofi Annan

Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
- Joseph Campbell

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Motivational Quotes

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Motivational Civil Rights Quotes

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