Thomas Sowell Quotes

Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.

If a policy is wrongheaded, feckless and corrupt, I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed.

There has been far too much hypocrisy in the field of civil rights. It is easy enough to give rousing speeches or call for legislation which has no possibility of passage.

As I grew older and got into the late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be a voice of the people. You know, getting locked up all the time and going through so much oppression and seeing it all around myself, I wanted to be a voice for it.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

There's still injustice happening in my world. I sing my songs at concerts and I'm so grateful that the people are ready to hear them.

It's the reason why I am always interested in engaging in people who are pushing us and pushing against the status quo. But having been an activist, the only thing that I'm always encouraging activists to do is, once you have raised the issue, and even through controversial means, you have to come behind it with an agenda and the possibility of reconciliation if power meets your demands.

If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to shut him up?

There's still a place for marching for instance with the Black Lives Matter movement, we've seen the importance of causing a scene, being on the streets and making your demands and your voice heard.

There's a lot of injustice in the world and it's what I sing about in my music and what I try to confront in my life as an activist.

We now have over a hundred thousand people who are signed up on our campaign and our petition to open up the debate, and we're encouraging people to come and to join us and to insist that we need to be included.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

How can you ask someone to live in the world and not have something to say about injustice?

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle....goa ts are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

All over this world people are standing up for freedom.

People can have political opinions and put them into songs. I'd never deliberately do that, but that's a personal choice I'm inspired by my man but not by his previous position. I'm more inspired by people that are left out by society.

When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.

A grievance is a political action. It's not just African-Americans.

As soon as I got out of jail, as soon as my trial was over, first of all, during the time I was in jail, there was an organization called the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, and I insisted that it be called National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners.

[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history.

We need to keep ringing the bell, wake people up to get our democracy together. Farm workers are like a symbol, and it is good that people are paying attention.

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

There's no question in my mind but that rights are never won unless people are willing to fight for them.

They say that this country is free, and they say that this country is equal, but it is not equal if it's 'sometimes'...We need change now. We demand actions now.