Quotes by Civil Rights Leaders

I never stop to plan. I take things step-by-step.
Mary McLeod Bethune
From the first I made my learning what little it was useful every way I could.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Next to God we are indebted to women first for life itself and then for making it worth living.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Cease to be a drudge seek to be an artist.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Cease to be a drudge seek to be an artist.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Knowledge is the prime need of the hour.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Invest in the human soul. Who knows it might be a diamond in the rough.
Mary McLeod Bethune
I have had more than half a century of such happiness. A great deal of worry and sorrow too but never a worry or a sorrow that was not offset by a purple iris a lark a bluebird or a dewy morning glory.
Mary McLeod Bethune
There is a place in God's sun for the youth "farthest down" who has the vision the determination and the courage to reach it.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Without faith nothing is possible. With it nothing is impossible.
Mary McLeod Bethune
I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing. ... Though I hadn't a penny left I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God faith in myself and a desire to serve.
Mary McLeod Bethune
If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.
Mary McLeod Bethune
I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I’ll never forget my librarian.
John Lewis
In terms of our elected officials, I think we need to ask...: How far should we go with our need to know before we completely veer off into the personal and the private and leave behind any chance of having a legitimate debate or discussion or discourse about the issues at hand?
John Lewis
The time is always right to do the right thing.
Dr. Martin Luther King
Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.
Mary McLeod Bethune
[O]ur revolt was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.
John Lewis
The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.
Mary McLeod Bethune
God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations. Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only tocome out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music. Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth, which flow through his instrument.
Dr. Martin Luther King
Love is a better way.
John Lewis
Suffering, though, can be nothing more than a sad and sorry thing without the presence on the part of the sufferer of a graceful heart, an accepting and open heart, a heart that holds no malice toward the inflictors of his or suffering This is a difficult concept to understand, and it is even more difficult to internalize, but it has everything to do with the way of nonviolence. We are talking about love here....This is a broader, deeper, more all-encompassing love. It is a love that acepts and embraces the hateful and the hurtful. It is a love that recognizes the spark of the divine in each of us, even in those who would raise their hand against us, those we might call our enemy.
John Lewis
I always understood the idea of the ultimate redeemer, Christ on the cross. But now I was beginning to see that this is something that is carried out in every one of us, that the purity of unearned suffering is a holy and affective thing It affects not only ourselves, but it touches and changes those around us as well. It opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of human conscience. Suffering puts us and those around us in touch with our consciences. It opens and touches our hearts. It makes us feel compassion when we need to and guilt if we must.
John Lewis
Forgiving is not about forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt
Mary McLeod Bethune
You're looking at the face of a black man who hates nobody.
Martin Luther King Sr.
I cannot hate any man!
Martin Luther King Sr.
To those of you with your years of service still ahead, the challenge is yours. Stop doubting yourselves. Have the courage to make up your minds and hold your decisions. Refuse to be BOUGHT for a nickel, or a million dollars, or a job!
Mary McLeod Bethune
I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.
Whitney Young
If not now, then when?
John E. Lewis
If not us, then who?If not now, then when?
John E. Lewis