Human Rights Activist Quotes

“Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.”

“The religion of Islam actually restores one's human feelings, human rights, human incentives, human, his talent.”

“Growing is the result of learning.”

“There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”

“You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.”

“It has taken us that long to get the deaf, dumb, and blind black men in the wilderness of North America to wake up and understand who they are.”

“All over this world people are standing up for freedom.”

“Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power.”

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

“Truth is on the side of the oppressed.”

“For one to control one's thoughts and feelings means one can actually control one's atmosphere and all who walk into its sphere of influence.”

“[JF] Kennedy was a deceitful man. He was a cold-blooded politician whose purpose was to get elected.”

“Ralph Bunche, who is an internationally recognized and respected diplomat, can't stay in a hotel in Georgia, which means that no matter what the accomplishment, the intellectual, the academic, or professional level of a negro is, collectively he stands condemned.”

“We do not condemn the preachers as an individual but we condemn what they teach. We urge that the preachers teach the truth, to teach our people the one important guiding rule of conduct - unity of purpose.”

“I don't have any hate. I've got some sense. I'm not going to let anybody who hates me tell me to love him. I'm not that way-out.”

“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.”

“It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.”

“Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.”

“We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

“I think, again, that that does the whole problem a, a disservice. It's not a case of our wanting to mix socially with whites. And when you - and the whites are right in the South when they say that getting a cup of coffee in a restaurant is not going to solve - is all right.”

“We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party.”

“If [politician] is not fulfilling his function, they then can set up the machinery to remove him from that position by whatever means necessary.”

“An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.”

“I say that the negro, when he is, when, when they cease to look at him as a negro and realize that he's a human being, then they will realize that he is just as capable and has the right to do anything that any other human being on this earth has a right to do to defend himself.”

“I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words”