Booker T. Washington Quotes

The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.

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

I do not believe in the anti-slavery of Abraham Lincoln … Two years ago I went to … prominent Republicans … to Abraham Lincoln and Lyman Trumbull, and neither of them dared to sign that petition to give me the right to testify in a court of justice.

Justice belongs to the people!

The rights, privileges and responsibilities of full American citizenship. This is all that the Negro asks. He will not willingly accept less. As long as America offers less, she will be that much less a democracy. The whole way is the American way

I was an American citizen, and I had as many rights as anyone else.

Human rights and rule of law are inseparably connected.

I recognize that in some cases it's more important to have freedom and justice than to have peace.

Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!

... rights are liable to be perverted to wrongs when we are incapable of rightly exercising them.

Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.

As soon as I hear of a right, I want it.

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them.

People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.

Liberty is inseparable from social justice, and those who dissociate them, sacrificing the first with the purpose of attaining the second more quickly, are the true barbarians of our time.

My priority is inclusion and justice. We need a system of justice that is applied across the board. That is what this country is striving for. We've suffered from a variety of exclusions. In the past, I compared our situation to a person with scissors who first cut the sleeve, then the fingers, then our body politic to pieces. My job is to stitch the wounds together. We need an agenda of inclusion: the youth, the women, the poor feel an enormous sense of exclusion.

The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

It is a different world and they [the Supreme Court] should speak for justice, not prejudice.... I seek justice, not in some distant tomorrow, not in some study commission, but now while I Iive.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.

A right is worth fighting for only when it can be put into operation.

My mother always said democracy is the best revenge.

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.

There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives.

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.