Bernie Sanders Quotes

Martin Luther King told American Blacks not to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

What drew me to both study and activism was the formative experience of the civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.

We will have demonstrations until the injustices that have caused them are eliminated.

The New Deal ultimately undermined Jim Crow’s prospects. The very legislation embraced by Southern segregationists created at first mere chinks, then whole openings for social change that were grasped by an incipient, soon powerful, movement for equal rights for Blacks.

The civil rights fight was a very important fight.

My grandfather James Peck was a civil rights activist.

Black lives, of course, matter. I spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights and for dignity, but if you don't want me to be here, that's OK. I don't want to out-scream people.

The first thing I did [in Michigan] was join a picket line of a pizzeria in Ann Harbor in 1963 that didn't allow African Americans to eat there.

One thing that I'd just remind young people of is that when John Lewis, who's a member of Congress today, defied George Wallace and led the march from Selma to Montgomery, he was 23 years old. Martin Luther King was the old man in the bunch, and he was 35, so young people need to know that they've always been an important part of our society, have always been at the forefront of pushing for a more just America, and we can't be successful without the impatience, the vigor that young people bring to the fight for social justice.

Bobby Darin was one of the first to take black musicians on the road with his band, and there were places that didn't want him to play, and he stood up to it.

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

When people discuss the 1960s and the great Civil Rights Era, they often speak in romantic terms as if there wasn't immense work put in, and as if there wasn't immense sacrifice that took place. But none of those battles were easily fought and won; there were sustained movements behind them.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act.

The fire trucks are out, there are thousands of people in the streets. You have a choice. You can have this, or you let Negroes eat at the lunch counters.

When I wrote the song, The Way It Is, I wanted to move people to take a stand on civil rights in this country.

Even here in America, people are fighting for civil rights 45 years after the civil rights movement.

I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.

The time to end racial segregation in the South is upon us now.

By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces, and put them back in the image of God and democracy.

Let me say … how deeply grateful all people of good will are to you for your assiduous labor and dauntless courage in seeking to make the Civil Rights Bill a reality.

Please tell the Attorney General that we have been cooling off for 350 years. If we cool off any more, we’ll be in the deep freeze. The Freedom Rides will go on.

I must admit that this is a deliberate attempt to dramatize conditions in this city and state. We’re going to turn Selma upside down and inside out in order to make it right side up.

I want you to leave here with a sense of mission. Martin Luther King is waiting for you to march with him.