Tom Wicker Quotes

When I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade, I heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at that time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change.

Donald Trump, perhaps the least historically minded man ever to reach the pinnacle of power, has fallen under the spell of what (and who) has come before. What's revealing about a President's sense of history is less about the history itself than about what that President's perspective on the history tells us about him.

As important as the civil rights movement was, I think what will rise to the top is that we left Earth in that time.

I think my experience at the University of Chicago, working in the civil rights movement, working in the peace movement, working with community organizations, did a lot to influence the politics that I have.

The president who did the most for black Americans in 20th century history was Lyndon Johnson, and he got his hands dirty by dealing with Southern senators, Southern congressmen, horse trading with them, cajoling them, learning what not to talk about. And he got civil rights passed and Great Society programs. That should be the model. Get over yourself.

When people denounced [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad for rejecting and criminalizing homosexuality, it should be remembered that was true of the United States until very recently. Women's rights were unheard of. Civil rights proponents were horribly treated, not just in the South. It was awful there, but pretty bad here. Environmental issues did not exist. Opposition to aggression was virtually zero. In fact, so little, that to this day, even scholarship mentions the Vietnam War as beginning in 1965.

I need to hear something about how he's going to bring people together in the spirit, hopefully, of Martin Luther King Jr., and if that's not heard, then we've got to constantly challenge him.

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap

The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.

Well, before the New Deal...[The Emancipation Proclamation] would be a good start.

I've heard people in the Middle East tell me that the most inspiring thing for them as people struggling against dictatorship in the Middle East is the memory of the civil rights movement.

The goal is to talk about the issues that are happening in the USA with the ultimate goal of making change. Not just some rebellious act that we're trying to have against our country.

It's a misconception to believe that the resistance ended with the civil rights movement.

We must support our rights or lose our character, and with it, perhaps, our liberties.

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace... One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being... The people owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.

If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.

That was exciting to be able to comment on civil rights. I mean, the civil rights movement that young people don't know about today, but Martin Luther King was considered by the establishment press in the early years of the sit-in movement as a dangerous man, and he was the equivalent at that time as Malcolm X. And he was told to stop his demonstrations; they were against the law and all of that. Now that he's sainted and sanctified we've forgotten.

To change history is very slow. The first two times I came to the States - black people didn't have the right to vote.

[ J. Edgar]Hoover, I'm sure, felt that he was right in everything he did and even the things that we don't like about his character.

It's not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it's the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.

I find myself moved by social justice issues. I'm not sure where that will lead me. I'm willing to nurture it.

The next step has to be the necessary step. It's always to put the immigrant community and the civil rights movement ahead of partisan politics.

I'm very proud that I was a Goldwater Girl. And then my political beliefs changed over time.

Sharing experience and building public support for the full range of rights is more powerful than legal cases.

Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.