Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

I hope that liberty and equality and opportunity lie within your heart because the hopes of millions of Americans depend on it.

I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

If you wish the Jews to become better men and useful citizens, then banish every humiliating restriction, open to them every avenue of gaining a livelihood.

This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, “Are the blacks good enough to be free?” but, “Have they the right?” So today the question is not, “Will outrages result from freeing humanity?” but, “Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?”

All that the law can do is to shape things so that no injustice shall be done by one to the other, and that each man shall be given the first chance to show the stuff that is in him.

This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country. So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife - I urge every American - to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people, and to bring peace to our land.

The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.

I think most Americans would agree people should be treated equally and everyone ought to be able to pursue a fulfilling life with the ones they love.

Freedom and Justice are twin sisters.

What this denomination stands for is, really, is the universal vision of all people being treated fairly under the law as God sees us in His sight.

Another essential to a universal and durable peace is social justice.

All I did was ask for rights. I didn't attack anyone. I didn't harass anyone. I didn't oppose the system or the country or the authority. All I said is, 'Why can't I drive?'

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.

Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.

And this we should believe: that hope and volition can bring us closer to our ultimate goal: justice for all, injustice for no-one.

Freedom is not enough.

I only ask of the government to be treated as all other men are treated.

I guess what I'd like to say is that people in Sierra Leone are human beings, just like Americans. They want to send their kids to school; they want to live in peace; they want to have their basic rights of life just like everyone else. I think we all owe an obligation to support people who want to do that.

I want to work on respecting individuals' dignity. Equal rights, that's where my heart is. That means equal rights and benefits, and that's what we need.

Equality implies individuality.

Could we not argue that America is about freedom, whether we live it out or not, but it really is about freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness. And that's what church is all about.

Together, we can build the kind of world in which we all seek to live, one of universal equality and justice.

Moral principles of liberty that endow a person with the right to claim and acquire property at the same time oblige that person to respect every other person’s equal right to do the same.

If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom.