Popular quotes about Civil! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 2
Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together.
Dorothy HeightA second line is in effect a civil rights demonstration. Literally, demonstrating the civil right of the community to assemble in the street for peaceful purposes. Or, more simply, demonstrating the civil right of the community to exist.
Ned SubletteFor many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.
Coretta Scott KingContrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.
Ron PaulIf there is no willingness to use force to defend civil society, it's civil society that goes away, not force.
Teresa Nielsen HaydenWhen you come to Montgomery, you see fifty-nine monuments and memorials, all about the Civil War, all about Confederate leaders and generals. We have lionized these people, and we have romanticized their courage and their commitment and their tenacity, and we have completely eliminated the reality that created the Civil War.
Bryan StevensonIn the Catholic view of things, abortion is a justice issue, not an issue of sexual morality... it is a civil rights issue, arguably the greatest civil rights issue of our time.
George WeigelThat's when civil liberty suffers - when we think special times justify the diminution of civil liberties. And I'm not going to accept that.
Alan DershowitzCivil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.
Al GoreIn emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.
Christiane AmanpourThe opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty...
Thomas JeffersonI see a lot of individual action when it comes to environmental questions really as a form of politics as a way of communicating with political leaders, much in the same way that acts of civil disobedience during the civil rights' movement were really acts of political communication, trying to get laws changed rather than based on the thought that the individual action would really change the practices of segregation.
Dale JamiesonTo its committed members (the Democratic Party) was still the party of heart, humanity, and justice, but to those removed a few paces it looked like Captain Hookโs crewโambulance-chasing lawyers, rapacious public policy grants persons, civil rights gamesmen, ditzy-brained movie stars, fat-assed civil servant desk squatters, recovering alcoholics, recovering wife-beaters, recovering child-buggers, and so forth and so on, a grotesque line-up of ill-mannered self-pitying, caterwauling freeloaders banging their tin cups on the pavement demanding handouts.
Nicholas von HoffmanMany Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results.
Thomas SowellRepublicans are horrible with civil liberties, and not so good with dollars and cents. Democrats are horrible with dollars and cents, and not so good with civil liberties.
Gary JohnsonThe psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind.
Terence McKennaCivil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
Thomas PaineCivil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke.
Mahatma GandhiWe don't want to blame the victim. The civil rights movement had a profound effect on the United States and on the American mind, maybe unique in the world. Once we realized how victimized people of color had been, an honest empathy went out and that's how we got civil rights legislation.
Jerome KaganWe can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.
Henry Louis GatesThe experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting Usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.
James MadisonBecause the US has control of the sea. Because the US has built up its wealth. Because the US is the only country in the world really not to have a war fought on its territory since the time of the Civil War ... Therefore we can afford mistakes that would kill other countries. And therefore we can take risks that they can't ... the core answer to why the United States is like this is we didn't fight World War I and World War II and the Cold War here.
George FriedmanTo the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself
James MadisonSince 9/11 the United States has been followed by countries with bad records, such as the former Soviet Union countries, into erosions of human rights. Because the United States has changed its standards it is undermining civil liberties elsewhere.
Mary RobinsonFor the law, the clarity of language and the finality of judgment is crucial, because you have to decide a case one way or another - whether it is criminal or civil or whatever. In ordinary life, you do not have to decide things with absolute finality. You do not have to decide on a theory in order to behave in a certain way towards other people.
Talal AsadWhereas a man is entitled to marry three more times and that fosters great abuse, even scholars accept that. So certainly since the 1980s Shari'a courts have been established and they allow for women to go to them and they basically grant them annulment. It's not a civil divorce, they don't have the right to grant alimony or maintenance or custody.
Sadakat KadriLord Rothschild had access to all manner of leaders and experts. He was responsible only to the Prime Minister and answerable to neither the electorate nor the civil service chiefs.
Derek WilsonTemporary teams of trusted people are generally sent to all Departments and to major agencies of government to assist in planning and to acquaint the incoming administration with the civil servants and bureaucracy that will remain in place in the new Administration.
Richard V. AllenThere's a pattern of the pathway opening in a certain way. We stared thinking, there's so many wonderful films about civil rights movements, but there isn't even one yet about the women's movement? It's hard to capture because it's so sprawling, and it's an ideology.
Marisa TomeiCivil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.
Mahatma GandhiI love general history. That's all I read really. I don't read novels, I read history. I love it. I live in an area that's really rich in Civil War history. I live in Kentucky on a farm. A lot of revolution, a lot of military history I love.
Steve ZahnI gained a great appreciation for what I would call the collective achievement of the country. I began thinking of America as a much more just and humane place than I would have thought if I'd been covering the civil rights struggle.
Charles KuraltTruth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.
Thomas JeffersonTy Cobb was still fighting the Civil War, and as far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees. But who knows, if he hadn't had that terrible persecution complex, he never would have been about the best ballplayer who ever lived.
Sam CrawfordThe clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.
Thomas JeffersonBy 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.
Constance Baker Motley[M]y mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone. And while she may be proud of me tonight, I've got to tell you, Mom, I'm even more proud of you. Thank you, Mom.
Julian CastroAny move by Israel to end the conflict with the Palestinians by unilateral moves - such as annexing the West Bank, delinking Gaza and declaring that there be no further diplomatic process - will lead to strong regional and global reactions, as well as intensify efforts at the UN and in civil society to brand Israel as an outlaw state dangerous to regional and world peace and guilty of criminal behavior.
Richard A. FalkThere are those who say to you - we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.
Hubert H. HumphreyHere we will solve with laws and dollars, problems that too many people around the world still must solve with violence and civil war.
Marco RubioI do not support a civil war. I don't want to be policeman of the world. But we can't back off of this.
John KasichI will not call myself a pacifist for the very simple reason that if something like a [Francisco] Franco should arise in Spain again, or, for that matter, in America, and tried to take away whatever dwindling civil liberties and human rights we retain, I would resist them with a club if I had to. But my admiration for pacifism as an outlook and a sensibility is enormous. I just find that it gets me into contradictions, as it often gets many pacifists into contradictory positions and strategies.
Murray BookchinCivil society rests on moral relationships. They are covenantal rather than contractual. They are brought about not by governments but by us a husbands and wives, parents, friends and citizens, and by the knowledge of what we do and what we are makes a difference to those around us. (...) Renewing society's resources of moral energy is the program, urgent but achievable.
Jonathan Sacks