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* Where are the unusual individuals, the daring pioneers, who will devote their lives to making a better history for humanity? In order to create a new history for mankind, human beings will first have to create a new history within themselves. They will have to liberate themselves from national, religious, racial, and class prejudices and from enslavement to honor, fame, and pleasure... -- Frederick Kettner

* "I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice... -- Coretta Scott King

* I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. -- Martin Luther King, Jr

"We have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and impotence in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created, it is as possible and as urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to poverty and racial injustice."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

"If the moderates of the white South fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr , 1958

In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

* "What we need to do is learn to respect and embrace our differences until our differences don’t make a difference in how we are treated." -- Yolanda King

* The United States of America is a nation where people are not united because of those three glaring frailties: racism, injustices and inequities. -- Yuri Kochiyama

Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor education is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction. Let us abolish such weapons of mass destruction here at home. -- Dennis Kucinich * Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction, homelessness, a weapon of mass destruction... racism, a weapon of mass destruction, fear, a weapon of mass destruction. We must disarm these weapons and renew our commitment to quality public schools and dedicated teachers and good housing and quality health care and decent jobs and stronger neighborhoods. -- Dennis Kucinich

Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.
~ Dennis Leary

* We have come a long way in America because of Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a disciplined, nonviolent revolution under the rule of law, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself. -- John R. Lewis

“I know we can't abolish prejudice through laws, but we can set up guidelines for our actions by legislation.” -- Belva Ann Lockwood

* No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. -- Nelson Mandela

"I hate racial discrimination most intensely and all its manifestations. I have fought all my life; I fight now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one, whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a Black man in a White man's court. This should not be I should feel perfectly at ease and at home with the assurance that I am being tried by a fellow South African, who does not regard me as an inferior, entitled to a special type of justice."
-- Nelson Mandela

* An intensive human rights education for all communities needs to be provided to overcome the old prejudices. -- Ruth Manorama

* It is a good moment to repeat that a war is never won. Never mind that history books tell us the opposite. The psychological and material costs of war are so high that any triumph is a pyrrhic victory. Only peace can be won and winning peace means not only avoiding armed conflict but finding ways of eradicating the causes of individual and collective violence: injustice and oppression, ignorance and poverty, intolerance and discrimination. We must construct a new set of values and attitudes to replace the culture of war which, for centuries, has been influencing the course of civilization. Winning peace means the triumph of our pledge to establish, on a democratic basis, a new social framework of tolerance and generosity from which no one will feel excluded. -- Federico Mayor

So join with me in this campaign. Lend me your strength and your support-and together, we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us in the beginning. From secrecy, and deception in high places, come home, America... From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America. From the entrenchment of special privilege and tax favoritism- From the waste of idle hands to the joy of useful labor- From the prejudice of race and sex- From the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick, come home, America. Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward. Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world. And let us be joyful in the homecoming, for:' this land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York Islands. From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me.' May God grant us the wisdom to cherish this good land and to meet the great challenge that beckons us home. This is the time. -- George McGovern

* We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.  -- Rigoberta Menchú * "I resolutely believe that respect for diversity is a fundamental pillar in the eradication of racism, xenophobia and intolerance. There is no excuse for evading the responsibility of finding the most suitable path toward the elimination of any expression of discrimination against indigenous peoples." -- Rigoberta Menchú

* "Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples."
-- Rigoberta Menchú

Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry. Let us renew our faith and pledge to Man, his right to be Himself, and free.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

* We have to build things that we want to see accomplished, in life and in our country, based on our own personal experiences ... to make sure that others ... do not have to suffer the same discrimination. -- Patsy Mink

* "As believers we all have an opportunity and moral obligation to recognize our spiritual common ground; to rise above our differences; to combat prejudice and intolerance." -- Queen Noor of Jordan

I have not been animated in my life to fight against race and sex discrimination simply because of my own identity. That would mean that one must be South African to fight apartheid, or a poor white in Appalachia to fight poverty, or Jewish to fight anti-Semitism. And I just reject that conception of how struggles should be waged." -- Eleanor Holmes Norton * Affirmative action is the most important modern anti-discrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination. No one who knows anything about the subject would say it hasn't worked. It has certainly done something, or else it wouldn't have provoked so much opposition. -- Eleanor Holmes Norton

End Racism Quotes

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