Mary Frances Berry Quotes

I'm not going to change the world overnight. It's one person at a time, and hopefully they're people in positions of power who can help people get in those roles and really, truly embrace colorblind casting.

Everything hinges on education. Without it, you can't advocate for proper health care, for housing, for a civil rights bill that ensures your rights.

f you don't have a seat at the table, then bring a folding chair.

I am committed to leveling the playing field and expanding opportunity to all.

Civil rights is unfinished business. Make it your business.

I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.'

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It's time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.

... equal responsibilities are less popular than equal rights.

Stronger than all the armies is the idea whose time has come. The time has come for equality in sharing in government and education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here.

One of the nice things about being chairman of the Civil Rights Commission is you can get people to listen to you. You can get the Federal Reserve to listen to you. You can get the governors to listen to you.

Our party’s always been the place you can come to wherever there’s injustice. That’s what the Democratic Party’s for. That’s why it was born. That’s why it survives. So the poor and the downtrodden and the bended can have a place to turn.

Within a decade, maybe two or three, Christians will come around to treating gays no differently than they now treat other groups whom they previously persecuted — women, Jews, blacks — but not because of some new interpretation of a biblical passage, or because of a new revelation from God. These changes will come about the same way that they always do: by the oppressed minority fighting for the right to be treated equally, and by a few enlightened members of the oppressing majority supporting their cause. Then what will happen is that Christians will take credit for the civil liberation of gays, dig through the historical record and find a few Christian bloggers or preachers who had the courage and the character to stand up for Gay rights when their fellow Christians would not, and then cite those as evidence that were it not for Christianity gays would not be equal

The Girl Scouts are a force for desegregation.

I think it's worth putting energy into affirmative action in terms of having diversity in positions of power because the door was shut for so long.

One of the things that I'm very proud to stand up and yell about is that we need to end gatekeeping in our society. We need to stop people from saying, 'You need to pass the test if you're going to come in here and do this.'

If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.

I want every person in New South Wales, no matter where they live, to feel that they have the choices and the opportunities to be their best.

If we want little girls and young women and people of color to see they have a place in the tech world, it's up to us to make that place for them.

Freedom and opportunity are precious gifts and the purpose of our politics is to expand them, for all our people.

If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick, it's the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me.