Quotes About Civil

I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

I worry that I may have overstated the impact of Civil War on the utopians. By the time the Civil War comes, most of the communities were quite separated from the wider American society. Their rhetoric is still about transforming the world, but they're not having that much traffic with their neighbors.

The first duty of government is to protect the citizen from assault. Unless it does this, all the civil rights and civil liberties in the world aren't worth a dime.

I went through the communist children's movement at the age of nine, in 1930, and into the Young Communist League in 1936. The Spanish civil war brought me back. I'd already broken with the communists - or the Stalinists, more precisely - in 1935. But the civil war in Spain and the desire to aid the remarkable people struggling against Fascism brought me back to the Young Communist League, so that I could effectively participate, however far removed from Spain, in their struggle. By 1938 I was ready to be expelled. By 1939 I was expelled.

The problem in this world is not civil disobedience...th e problem in this world is civil obedience.

The culture of the State Department is very negative towards a conservative foreign policy. And the model that we all have, of civil servants as neutral careerists who carry out the policy of the elected president, doesn't work nearly the way it should in the State Department. So that there are many people who want to be good civil servants, who want to try and carry out these policies, but are afraid to do so. And I'm not even counting the very small number of conservatives in the State Department who are genuinely at risk.

The 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.

Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity. Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good. Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law.

The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction.

I think there's evil on both sides [of Syria], and I think that's one reason I don't want to be involved in civil war. I see things in personal terms. I just can't see sending one of my sons - or your son or daughter - to fight in a civil war, where on one side we have a dictator, who in all likelihood gassed his people.

I think everybody should get married. Boys and girls. Girls and boys. Boys and boys! Girls and girls! Shouldn't we all be entitled to a family-Civil rights baby it's civil rights. It doesn't get any better here in Berkeley I'll tell you that.

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.

There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.

A fundamental reason why Britain was not torn apart by civil war after 1688 was that its inhabitants' aggression was channelled so regularly and so remorsely into war and imperial expansion abroad.

Malaysians, during the colonial period, were not given the top positions: we were always subordinate. Fortunately for us, the people who took over were mainly civil servants: people who were serving the Government.

[In the event of war, Americans would] resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.

Dwight Eisenhower has been underestimated, which may relate to his advanced age in office, his somewhat uneven communications skills, and his failure to present a forward-looking vision on the rising issue of civil rights.

Individuals for whom no orthodox cure is available surely are entitled to select a health care approach.....This right (is) specifically within,,,the 1st, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 14th amendments to the (US) Constitution....To be insensitive to the very fundamental civil liberties....(:) the choice...of the person whose body is being ravaged (by disease), is to display slight understanding of the essence of our free society and its constitutional underpinnings.

To 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

I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.

The simple truth is that there isn't a single civil right I would deny to an evangelical Christian. I've defended their freedom of religion, of association, of disassociation, and believe they should be treated with respect. I wouldn't dream of drumming them out of the military, firing them for their faith, tearing up their relationships, or taking their children away from them. The favor, alas, is not returned.

You can't put civil rights on the ballot.

... being a feminist means that you believe in civil rights and social justice.

Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.

Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.

The things I really cared about - poverty, the Great Society, civil rights - were all being drained away by the Vietnam War. The line that keeps running through my mind is the line I never spoke: "I can't speak for a war that I believe is immoral."

When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.

So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding.

Political freedom is, or ought to be, the best guaranty for the safety and continuance of spiritual, mental, and civil freedom. It is the combination of numbers to secure the liberty to each one.

Lord 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.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.

I will not resolve a land dispute if civil groups or politicians are involved in the land disputes.

The pursuit of perfection always implies a definite aristocracy, which is as much a goal of effort as a noble philosophy, an august civil polity or a great art.

This [EURO] was never a hate group, the European American Unity and Rights Organization was an organization in its charter is dedicated to true civil rights and stopping discrimination against people, that the best qualified people should be engaged and that every people have the right to preserve their heritage, their freedom and their values.

Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.

For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.

The 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.

The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens.

America's humanitarian concern for foreign victims of natural disasters or civil strife is being abused by President Bush when he extends legal status to foreigners in the US when there is no reason that they could not go home safely.

And these great natural rights may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property; because as there is no other known method of compulsion, or of abridging man's natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense.

I do not support a civil war. I don't want to be policeman of the world. But we can't back off of this.

The fact that we became a nation and immediately separated church and state - it has saved us from all the misery that has beset mankind with inquisitions, internecine and civil wars, and other assorted ills.

It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.

It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine which religion is true, or what false. Our government is a civil, and not a religious institution.

My links with [Mahatma] Gandhi now are very political links because I do not believe there is any other politics available to us in the late twentieth century, a period of a totalitarianism linked with the market. There is really no other way you can do politics and create freedom for people without the kinds of instruments he revived. Civil disobedience is a way to create permanent democracy, perennial democracy, a direct democracy.

The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality.