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Quotes about race

99 quotes from 54 people

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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
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 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)
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)
Segregation is wrong because it is a system of adultery perpetuated by an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Cobo Center speech (1963)
- Justice
We must stand up and say, “I’m black and I’m beautiful,” and this self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968“I Have a Dream”, March on Washington (28 August 1963)
- Hope
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968“I Have a Dream”, March on Washington (28 August 1963)
- Freedom
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968“Beyond Vietnam”, Riverside Church, New York (4 April 1967)
- Money
- War & Peace
To those who follow the Way there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal. We be all souls seeking escape.
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936Kim (1901), Chapter XIIIn context
- Religion
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.
Harper Lee1926–2016To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 2, Ch. 23 (Atticus Finch)
- Justice
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