John Lewis Quotes

To be in a situation where you have no rights whatsoever is something I wish everybody could experience. People's attitudes would change. It would be a better place.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know, And things need changin' everywhere you go

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

I suffered first as a child from discrimination, poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.

I want the white people to understand my people.

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.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.

I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.

I still find that a kind of stricture of the heart happens when I see any form of bigoted or racist behaviour. I get an actual pain in my heart.

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

Look at the Civil Rights Movement. Look at any kind of fight for change. People had to keep fighting and taking their rights. Rights are never given to you. They have to be fought for and they have to be taken.

Yeah, race exists. Racism is still here, and it's doing well. Turn on the news. I don't think me and my comedy can really change that.

You can't comfort the afflicted with afflicting the comfortable.

We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism.

I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare.

Social equity is based on justice; politics change on the opinion of the time. The black man's skin will be a mark of social inferiority so long as white men are conceited, ignorant, unjust, and prejudiced. You cannot legislate these qualities out of the white - you must steal them out by teaching, illustration, and example.

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

I have all my life fought against prejudice, having been subjected to it myself.

People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.

I have found people on both sides of the aisle, white and black, that'll give you the shirt off their back. And I've also found people that won't give you a piece of bread if you're starving to death.

We may very well be making history here ... in the presence of the man who is entrusted with the banner of American liberty that was taken from Lincoln when he was shot 95 years ago … Dr. King was almost stabbed to death, has been shot at, has been arrested more often than anybody in the United States, south and north … Dr. King’s life at this moment is in just as great danger as was Lincoln’s. And he has to walk with care if he is to continue to lead this crusade

It is not right that a servile race should inhabit the same locality which their ancestors inhabited in power and glory.

We must strip away slogans such as “states’ rights.” We must attach the “wrongs” of society.

… moral ideas are not fixed. The attitude of public opinion towards slavery was completely changed in twenty or thirty years.