What are your favorite quotes from gay/civil rights leaders?
December 4, 2014 9:16 AM Subscribe
I'm trying to make a compilation of quotes or calls to action that are inspirational from gay rights/civil rights leaders over the past century or so. Any help you could offer, links, etc, would be awesome. Thank you.
"There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation."
- Pierre Trudeau (when he was Justice Minister of Canada.)
posted by Lescha at 9:44 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
- Pierre Trudeau (when he was Justice Minister of Canada.)
posted by Lescha at 9:44 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door." - Harvey Milk
posted by Hanuman1960 at 9:52 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by Hanuman1960 at 9:52 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]
This link has a ton of Harvey Milk quotes, e.g. "Hope will never stay silent."
posted by dayintoday at 9:55 AM on December 4, 2014
posted by dayintoday at 9:55 AM on December 4, 2014
I mean this is so obvious its cliche but Dr. King delivered these like crazy.
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
-MLK Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
"...it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."
-MLK Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
"We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."
-MLK Speech at Riverside Church in New York City (4 April 1967)
"It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event you are not even a failure. You're just not there."
-Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
"Mrs. Greenstone, I am 59 years old. I am black and I have lived with and fought racism my entire life. I have been in prison 23 times -- serving 28 months in a federal penitentiary and 30 days on a North Carolina chain gang, among other punishments.
I have seen periods of progress followed by reaction. I have seen the hopes and aspirations of Negroes rise during World War II, only to be smashed during the Eisenhower years. I am seeing the victories of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations destroyed by Richard Nixon.
I have seen black young people become more and more bitter. I have seen dope addiction rise in the Negro communities across the country.
I have been in a bombed church. My best friends, closest associates, and colleagues-in-arms have been beaten and assassinated. Yet, to remain human and to fulfill my commitment to a just society, I must continue to fight for the liberation of all men. There will be times when each of us will have doubts. But I trust that neither of us will desert our great cause."
-Bayard Rustin, in a 1969 letter to a Jewish professor who wrote of being tired of combating anti-semitism
"Already they have begun to do to Gandhi what has been done to Jesus--worship him as an unobtainable ideal. That is the sin of men of goodwill--not really to believe in their own power."
-Bayard Rustin 1950 letter to A.J. Muste
"In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices."
-Barney Frank, 2008
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
-Maya Angelou Still I Rise 1978
"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
-Ida B. Wells
"We could choose to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are locked up and locked out or headed for prison before they are old enough to vote. We could seek for them the same opportunities we seek for our own children; we could treat them like one of “us.” We could do that. Or we can choose to be a nation that shames and blames its most vulnerable, affixes badges of dishonor upon them at young ages, and then relegates them to a permanent second-class status for life. That is the path we have chosen, and it leads to a familiar place."
- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
posted by Wretch729 at 10:11 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
-MLK Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
"...it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."
-MLK Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
"We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."
-MLK Speech at Riverside Church in New York City (4 April 1967)
"It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event you are not even a failure. You're just not there."
-Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
"Mrs. Greenstone, I am 59 years old. I am black and I have lived with and fought racism my entire life. I have been in prison 23 times -- serving 28 months in a federal penitentiary and 30 days on a North Carolina chain gang, among other punishments.
I have seen periods of progress followed by reaction. I have seen the hopes and aspirations of Negroes rise during World War II, only to be smashed during the Eisenhower years. I am seeing the victories of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations destroyed by Richard Nixon.
I have seen black young people become more and more bitter. I have seen dope addiction rise in the Negro communities across the country.
I have been in a bombed church. My best friends, closest associates, and colleagues-in-arms have been beaten and assassinated. Yet, to remain human and to fulfill my commitment to a just society, I must continue to fight for the liberation of all men. There will be times when each of us will have doubts. But I trust that neither of us will desert our great cause."
-Bayard Rustin, in a 1969 letter to a Jewish professor who wrote of being tired of combating anti-semitism
"Already they have begun to do to Gandhi what has been done to Jesus--worship him as an unobtainable ideal. That is the sin of men of goodwill--not really to believe in their own power."
-Bayard Rustin 1950 letter to A.J. Muste
"In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices."
-Barney Frank, 2008
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
-Maya Angelou Still I Rise 1978
"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
-Ida B. Wells
"We could choose to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are locked up and locked out or headed for prison before they are old enough to vote. We could seek for them the same opportunities we seek for our own children; we could treat them like one of “us.” We could do that. Or we can choose to be a nation that shames and blames its most vulnerable, affixes badges of dishonor upon them at young ages, and then relegates them to a permanent second-class status for life. That is the path we have chosen, and it leads to a familiar place."
- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
posted by Wretch729 at 10:11 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]
“Most people say we are the same as straights except for what we do in bed. I say what we do in bed is the only place where we are the same.” —Harry Hay
posted by ottereroticist at 11:02 AM on December 4, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by ottereroticist at 11:02 AM on December 4, 2014 [2 favorites]
Nelson Mandela:
To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.
I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.
We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.
Also though I realize I am an easy mark for this sort of sentiment you might want to give a listen to Jennifer Lawrence despite her absence of real life civil rights credentials, singing "Hanging Tree" in the new Mockingjay I movie. Damn, I find that stirring.
posted by bearwife at 12:11 PM on December 4, 2014
To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.
I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.
We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.
Also though I realize I am an easy mark for this sort of sentiment you might want to give a listen to Jennifer Lawrence despite her absence of real life civil rights credentials, singing "Hanging Tree" in the new Mockingjay I movie. Damn, I find that stirring.
posted by bearwife at 12:11 PM on December 4, 2014
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SILENCE = DEATH
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:29 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]