Rosa Parks Quotes

I did not get on the bus to get arrested I got on the bus to go home.

My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest…I did a lot of walking in Montgomery.

I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.

I had felt for a long time that, if I was ever told to get up so a white person could sit, that I would refuse to do so.

Rosa Parks wasn't the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.

I may be arrested, I may be tried and thrown into jail, but I never will be silent.

The goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to give Negroes a chance to sit in a segregated restaurant beside the same white man who had brutalized them for 400 years.

The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.

I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

Even after facing jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously and boldly spoke out against racial inequality.

On the horizon loom a growing number of iconoclasts and Atheists, young black men and women who can read think and ask questions; and who impertinently demand to know why Negroes should revere a god that permits them to be lynched, Jim-Crowed, and disenfranchised.

I shall order the men to disregard your order, to stand fast. I shall then walk to the largest window in the plant, open it, divest myself of my outer reinments, remove my shirt and bare my bosom. Then when you order your troops to fire, mine will be the first breast those bullets will strike!

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest

When the world’s run by fools it’s the duty of intelligence to disobey.

I grieve, however, that anyone could be stupid enough, in any part of our country, to arrest the Vice-Presidential candidate of a recognized party because, on his way to speak to citizens of the United States, he tried to go through a door which was marked as the entrance for people of color. It seems to me completely incredible that, in a State where colored people are allowed to enlist and go to war and be killed for their country, there should exist anything so senseless as a rule which forces human beings to enter through separate doors according to their color. It is fundamentally un-Christian and wrong.

We have to be willing to give our lives to put an end to segregation. If we do, then segregation will end even if we die.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Civil disobedience is - it's no fun.

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I'll get nonviolent. But don't teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent.

Resist much, obey little.

I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.

The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights.

Remember: Resist do not comply.

I came back to Louisville after the Olympics with my shiny gold medal. Went into a luncheonette where black folks couldn't eat. Thought I'd put them on the spot. I sat down and asked for a meal. The Olympic champion wearing his gold medal. They said, "We don't serve niggers here." I said, "That's okay, I don't eat 'em." But they put me out in the street. So I went down to the river, the Ohio River, and threw my gold medal in it.