Winthrop Rockefeller Quotes

If you decide to walk into the schools with the little colored kids, take me along, Daddy. God bless you.

Brown v. Board helped unite us all, and gave us all great pride knowing we all are truly E Pluribus Unum - one people out of many.

I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.

I was raised in a desegregated neighborhood.

Floyd Thompson, a white man, desegregated NASA. Period.

We are, by many measures, one of the more diverse cities in the country, growing more diverse all the time, and one of the more harmonious in terms of how we live together.

It's a great day in America when white people, black people and Latinos can all come together and pick on another minority.

Each year on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, America has the opportunity to reflect on our nation's progress towards the realization of his dream.

I envision someday a great, peaceful South Africa in which the world will take pride, a nation in which each of many different groups will be making its own creative contribution.

From afar, I have cried watching my nation, sore with prejudice, slowly heal itself. I hurt along with America, my phantom pains only alleviated by work I do every day - art.

I would say the country is a different country. It is a better country. The signs I saw when I was growing up are gone and they will not return. In many ways the walls of segregation have been torn down.

The movie, 'Remember the Titans,' is my favorite movie, staring Denzel Washington. I love the way in this movie the game of football brings those boys together, it unites those boys on that football field. It unites a whole town, black, white, old, young, rich and poor.

Now we have black and white elected officials working together. Today, we have gone beyond just passing laws. Now we have to create a sense that we are one community, one family. Really, we are the American family.

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.

In our own lives and in our communities, we need to find a way to include others rather than exclude them. We need to find a way to allow our pain and suffering, individually and collectively.

I think it is so great right now that we are in an age where there's an African American president in office. I think it is important for our generation to really witness that.

Only time, education and plenty of good schooling will make anti-segregation work.

When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history.

The more conservative element of Negroes differ from those who hold the most radical views in opposition to segregation only in terms of time and technique of its elimination …. all Negroes must condemn any form of segregation based on race, creed or color anywhere in our nation

I am very, very hopeful about the American South - I believe that we will lead America to what Dr. King called 'the beloved community.'

The story of Jackie Robinson is also the story of Branch Rickey. He had many reasons for doing what he did, but he stood up against his own people.

I would say to Republicans that when you look at civil rights legislation that took place in the 1960s, it took a bipartisan effort to get those things done, and so what I would tell my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, is let's come together, and let's be for fairness.

It's a new world that's very, very difficult to make sense of. But we have a new hope. We have a new man. America has now elected its first openly black President.

I couldn't go to school with whites. Now there are schools that educate everyone.

I played an integral part in helpings formulating that new vision... that we must abandon apartheid and accept one united South Africa with equal rights for all, with all forms of discrimination to be scrapped from the statute book.