Rosa Parks Quotes

When people decide they want to be free, there is nothing that can stop them.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

There's nothing automatic about political change, about liberation.

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

If we really want liberty - if we really want liberty - then we need to go out and get it, we need to take it, because nobody is going to give it to us. And we need to do it now.

No one, and no mind, was ever emancipated by merely being left alone.

Rights are to be taken, not requested; seized, not begged for.

I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.

We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.

When the people want to retake their destiny in hand, they can do it, despite this ceaseless campaign of denigration and infantilization.

It is so sad that it takes so long for people to understand what needs to happen in order to be free.

I think about freedom and the urgency around our imagination. If you can't imagine it, you can't fight for it.

The history of political movements in the African diaspora is that the solution to the problem is never in the hands of people who are advancing the movement. I try and operate on my own terms.

Depend upon it that the lovers of freedom will be free.

We need to create a new revolution, and to do that, don’t waste your life: stop pleasing people, and become who you always wanted to be.

Freedom is not a gift of heaven, you have to fight for it every day

We are going to have to be very careful that we give people the hope that freedom is actually better than unfreedom.

I do not want to be civilized. I want to be liberated.

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty...

Do not wait for me to do something for your rights. It's your world and you can change it.

A people that loves freedom will in the end be free.

Once you've tasted freedom, it stays in your heart...

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it.