Colin Powell Quotes

I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans - who are just as patriotic as we are.

There are millions and millions of patriotic Muslim Americans.

Minority rights have to be protected. That is America’s great contribution to the world.

We are a nation of minorities. In a nation of minorities, you can’t cherry-pick rights.

If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green.

Our culture is a very diverse one, and I think now it is incredibly dangerous and very wrong to persecute Muslims and say there is something wrong with being a Muslim.

No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.

We can't keep thinking of gay people as being ostracised; we can't keep thinking of Muslim people as being [ostracised] because of the fundamentalism that occurs in Islam. Muslim people have to do something about speaking up about it. We can't judge a book by its cover.

Where is it written that if you don't like religion you are somehow disqualified from being a legitimate American? What was Mark Twain, a Russian?

We are a people united by our love for freedom, even when we differ in our personal beliefs. In America, we are free to profess any faith we choose, or no faith at all.

You're entitled in this country to worship as you please or to not worship. It's one of the great things that defines us as a nation, and it's at the heart of what it is to be in America.

I'm interested in what it means to be an American. I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is.

If the Constitution is worth anything, if the Declaration of Independence is worth anything, if the boys who died on the field of battle did not die in vain, fair employment practices are correct and necessary.

I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, 'Hey man, we don't go for that anymore.'

I think that in many ways, gays are behind women and behind blacks, as far as rights go. But I always say, if you know one of us, it's hard to hate us.

I have some wonderful friends from the Mideast that are as red, white and blue as anybody you know, that have been harassed, and I think it's a terrible, terrible thing.

It is time Australian Muslims stop being treated as negotiable citizens in their own country. It is time people stop 'tolerating' us, presuming some right to decide if we have a place in our own home.

One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.

Of strong importance to me is the defense of minority rights, not just racial minorities, but ideological and religious minorities.

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.

True Americanism is opposed utterly to any political divisions resting on race and religion. To the race or to the sect, which as such attempts to take possession of the politics or the public education of the country, true Americanism says, Hands off!

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.

The United States is a country of freedom that looks primarily after the rights of all of its citizens, of all religions and races, despite the problems in application that manifest themselves from time to time.

America is a dirty rag if it will not protect all of its citizens.

Though I love my country I do not love my countrymen.