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Quotes about race

99 quotes from 54 people

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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968I Have a Dream (1963)
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968
- Slavery
Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‘Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.’
Colin Powell1937–2021
When we’re unemployed, we’re called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it’s called a depression.
Jesse Jackson1941–2026
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968
Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968
I think it’s insulting to people who have a heritage of slavery to compare the homosexual experience in America to that. It’s an unfortunate, cheap attempt to piggyback on something and to co-opt life experiences of others, claim that you’ve experienced them yourselves so that you can advance a cause.
Rush Limbaugh1951–2021
- Slavery
I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968
It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)
I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.
Nelson Mandela1918–2013Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
People sometimes ask if I have tried to convince black ‘leaders’ to take a different view on racial issues. Of course not. I wouldn’t spend my time trying to persuade the mafia to give up crime. Why should I spend time trying to convince race hustlers to give up victimhood? It’s their bread and butter.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930
I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
Clarence Thomasborn 1948
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968I Have a Dream (1963)
There can be no doubt that racial paternalism and its unintended consequences can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination.
Clarence Thomasborn 1948Adarand Constructors v. Peña (1995)