Dennis Chavez Quotes

Ensuring fairness in the American workplace should be a cornerstone of our economic policy.

The Declaration of Independence is that sacred American text so full of meaning and purpose and yet quite empty if you examine it and pull it apart because the words 'All Men' exclude a vast number of citizens.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

Civil rights are more important today than they ever have been in our country. There is so much divisiveness today.

Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't carry just a piece of cloth to symbolize his belief in racial equality; he carried the American flag.

While our country has made great strides in breaking down the barriers which for so long denied equal opportunity to all Americans, we are not yet the beautiful symphony of brotherhood of Dr. King's dream.

Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship.

Our immediate task is to remove the last remnants of the barriers which stand between millions of our citizens and their birthright. There is no justifiable reason for discrimination because of ancestry or religion or race or color.

I say to Governor Wallace, no American can ever be an outsider anywhere in this nation.

The language is, "We the people"; not we the white people, not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, but we the people; not we the horses, sheep, and swine, and wheelbarrows, but we the people, we the inhabitants [of America; and if Negroes are people, they are included in the benefits for which the Constitution of America was ordained and established.

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.

This administration will work toward the eventual elimination of segregation from our national life

Is the Jew a man? He is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, my fellow; and he shall not, if I can prevent it, be a slave! I demand for him equal rights and privileges, and a place within the pale of the Constitution!" Let all the people say, Even so, AMEN!

The only part of my mother's experience that still gets to me is the way she and people like her were looked down upon for asking America to be America, for asking for full and equal participation in our democracy.

We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

I do think that the success, although still not complete... in the recognition of equal rights... to all Americans, regardless of color, creed and so forth, was also one of the best stories we've had to report.

I wanted the young African-American girls also on the bus to know that they had a right to be there, because they had paid their fare just like the white passengers.

We still have work to do in our efforts to advance equal rights for all Americans.

Well, my personal mission statement is that we want marriage equality in all 50 states. We want it not to be a state-by-state issue. We don't want it to be something the majority is voting on. I don't think the civil rights of any minority should be in the hands of any majority.

We in the Jewish community must ask ourselves what role we are going to play in changing policies and practices that discriminate against LGBT Americans. We have a special responsibility and civic duty to ensure that all Americans are treated with dignity and equality.

We beg you to save young America from the blight of race prejudice. Do not bind the children within the narrow circles of your own lives.

It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.

Race prejudice can't be talked down, it must be lived down.