Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. — Alice Paul
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. — Alice Paul
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none — Thomas Jefferson
ERA means abortion funding, means homosexual privileges, means whatever else. — Phyllis Schlafly
the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. — Thomas Jefferson
Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
To every woman who gave birth, to every citizen and taxpayer, it's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women of the United States of America! — Patricia Arquette
I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality. — Alice Paul
All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished. All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection. — James K. Polk
We ask only for justice and equal rights-the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law. — Lucy Stone
Women will be no longer made the slaves of, or dependent upon men ... They will be equal in education, rights, privileges and personal liberty. — Robert Owen
[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. — John Rawls
All men have equal rights, but not to equal things. — Edmund Burke
If you believe in equal rights, then what do “women’s rights,” “gay rights,” etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all. — Thomas Sowell
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. — Emma Goldman
Equal Rights Quotes
I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. — Sojourner Truth
There must be a world revolution which puts an end to all materialistic conditions hindering woman from performing her natural role in life and driving her to carry out man's duties in order to be equal in rights. — Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi
To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip top if you must, but take the step.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. — Audre Lorde
Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility. — Olympe de Gouges
I don't need no peace. I need equal rights and justice. — Peter Tosh
Live your life. Take chances. Be crazy. Don't wait. Because right now is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be again.
I always feel the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end. — Alice Paul
The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute. — Julian Bond
We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design. — Jacque Fresco
Every man is our brother, and every man’s burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal. — Whitney M. Young
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. — William O. Douglas
Race to race, the Republicans are putting up candidates that are quite far out of the mainstream in terms of should we have passed the Civil Rights Act or does Social Security need to exist. — Tim Kaine
If things go wrong, don’t go with them.
No Republican questions or disputes civil rights. I have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the civil rights act. — Rand Paul
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act. — Bobby Scott
Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole. — Lyndon B. Johnson
If the feelings are mutual, the effort will be equal.
It's time for Congress to act, restore the Voting Rights Act, and take action to prevent voter disenfranchisem ent. As your next Congresswoman, I will stand up to the extremists in the Republican Party to ensure civil rights are protected for everyone. — Alma Adams
Secession, like any other REVOLUTIONARY ACT, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms. — Andrew Jackson
Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts. — Roger Wicker
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. — Abraham Lincoln
Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Quotes
I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary. — Ronald Reagan
The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will. — Antonin Scalia
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was vigorously and vociferously opposed by the Southern states. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law nonetheless. — Henry Rollins
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyways.
I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. — Ronald Reagan
We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964. — Clarence Thomas
Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results. — Thomas Sowell
Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.
I like the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. It would be simple. It would be straightforward. — Donald Trump
The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope - that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow. — Aberjhani
This bill attempts to make sure that President Clinton is not allowed to do by Executive Order what Congress has declined to enact in the past two congressional sessions namely, to treat homosexuals as a special class protected under various titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. — Jesse Helms
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society. — Aberjhani
Civil Rights Quotes
I don't call myself a white supremacist. I'm a civil rights activist concerned about European-American rights. — David Duke
Justice is indivisible. You can't decide who gets civil rights and who doesn't. — Angela Davis
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. — Frederick Douglass
Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right questions.
In Tanganyika we believe that only evil, Godless men would
make the color of a mans skin the criteria for granting him civil
rights. — Julius Nyerere
I just couldn't move. History had me glued to the seat. — Claudette Colvin
Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders. — Diane Nash
There is a source of power in each of us that we don't realize until we take responsibility. — Diane Nash
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess. — A. Philip Randolph
The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others. — Julian Bond
Civil Rights Movement Quotes
There is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined in the solidarity of human brotherhood. — Walter Reuther
Jim Crow is alive and it's dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, my friend, instead of a white robe. — Myrlie Evers-Williams
The tragedy of the civil rights movement is that just as it achieved the beginning of the end of racial segregation, white educated elites became swept up in the glamour of the sexual revolution. — Maggie Gallagher
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character. — Pam Grier
Even in the civil rights movement, there were so many unbelievable women. They never, ever received the credit that they should have received. They did all of the, and I cannot say it, they did all of the dirty work. Hard work. — John Lewis
John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university. — Russell Banks
Our involvement in the civil rights movement is what sent us into our involvement against apartheid. — Mary Jane Patterson
The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against. — Thomas Sowell
I do think it's extremely important to acknowledge the gains that were made by the civil rights movement, the black power movement.Institutional transformations happened directly as a result of the movements that people, unnamed people, organized and gave their lives to. — Angela Davis
Rights In America Quotes
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. — William S. Burroughs
Of the people, by the people, for the people. — Sun Yat-sen
My answer to the racial problem in America is to not deal with it at all. The founding fathers dealt with it when they made the Constitution. — James Meredith
Discrimination is discrimination no matter who the victim is, and it is always wrong. There are no special rights in America, despite the attempts by many to divide blacks and the gay community with the argument that the latter are seeking some imaginary special rights at the expense of blacks. — Julian Bond
I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights. — Clarence Thomas
Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights. — Benjamin Rush
The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. — Samuel Adams
America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. — Mother Teresa
We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance-algae... We could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States. — Barack Obama
Amendment Quotes
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. — Benjamin Franklin
Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. — George Washington
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. — Thomas Jefferson
I believe America went wrong in terms of respecting the First Amendment, the state of free speech on American college campuses and on the media and in academia. — Milo Yiannopoulos
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it. — Abraham Lincoln
The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. — Alexander Hamilton
To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. — Thurgood Marshall
A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer. — Seneca
The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed. — James Madison
Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. — Janis Joplin
Racial Equality Quotes
I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us. — Angela Davis
To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow. — William Faulkner
As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. — Sonia Sotomayor
People need to free their minds of racial prejudice and believe in equality for all and freedom regardless of race. It would be a good thing if all people were treated equally and justly and not be discriminated against because of race or religion or anything that makes them different from others. — Rosa Parks
It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence . . . and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect. — Manitonquat
My fight is not for racial sameness but for racial equality and against racial prejudice and discrimination. — John Oliver Killens
It does no service to the cause of racial equality for white people to content themselves with judging themselves to be nonracist. Few people outside the clan or skinhead movements own up to all-out racism these days. White people must take the extra step. They must become anti-racist. — Clarence Page
Long before many of us were even conscious of our own degradation, these men [Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. DuBois] fought for African national and racial equality. — Kwame Nkrumah
I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences. — Sonia Sotomayor
The conviction that all men are equal by reason of their natural dignity has been generally accepted. Hence racial discrimination can no longer be justified. — Pope John XXIII
Civil Right Movement Quotes
It is not alone that justice is wounded by denying women a part in the making of the civilized world - a more immediate wrong is the way the movement for a fuller, freer life for all human beings is hampered. — Ida Tarbell
There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts. — Bayard Rustin
We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Anyone who said he wasn't afraid during the civil rights movement was either a liar or without imagination. I was scared all the time. My hands didn't shake but inside I was shaking. — James L. Farmer, Jr.
The social issues outside of football are not as defined as they were earlier, when integration took place and certain rights were legislated. The Civil Rights movement is over. Individuals can buy homes wherever they want, travel first class wherever they want, eat wherever they want. — Jim Brown
You could not be in the civil rights movement without having an appreciation for everybody's rights. That these rights are not divisible - not something men have and women don't and so on. — Julian Bond
Silver rights aren't as dramatic and captivating as civil rights. The movement isn't good TV and it's boring or inaccessible to many people. The forums were created to spread awareness, dialogue, and community to forge new partnerships and ideas. — John Hope Bryant
I think my experience at the University of Chicago, working in the civil rights movement, working in the peace movement, working with community organizations, did a lot to influence the politics that I have. — Bernie Sanders
The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything. — Carol Moseley Braun
The only tired I was, was tired of giving in. — Rosa Parks
Equal Treatment Quotes
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people. — Thomas Jefferson
There are few talents so richly rewarded - especially in politics and the media - as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights. — Thomas Sowell
On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family. — Eleanor Holmes Norton
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals. — Felix Frankfurter
When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination. — Thomas Sowell
There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals. — Aristotle
Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination. — Thomas Sowell
Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice. — Jerry Brown
calls for equal treatment are often seen as calls for 'special treatment' in situations where discrimination has become the norm. — Anita Hill
Feminists want to be treated as equals, but at the same time they want special treatment. — Rush Limbaugh
History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state. — Michael K. Simpson
Since the women are the ones who bear the babies and there's nothing we can do about that, our laws and customs then make it the financial obligation of the husband to provide the support. It is his obligation and his sole obligation. And this is exactly and precisely what we will lose if the Equal Rights Amendment is passed. — Phyllis Schlafly
My greatest disappointment in all the projects I worked on during the White House years was the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified. ... Why all the controversy and why such difficulty in giving women the protection of the Constitution that should have been theirs long ago? — Rosalynn Carter
I believe the equal rights amendment is a necessity of life for all citizens. The cabinet sometimes felt that I shouldn't be so outspoken. — Betty Ford
The Equal Rights Amendment would "turn holy wedlock into holy deadlock." — William Rehnquist
When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law. — Patricia Ireland
We are going to fight to pass the long over-due Equal Rights Amendment. — Bernie Sanders
I'll do anything to pass the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], even if it means wearing babydoll nightgowns and padded bras, if that will make people less afraid. — Joan Hackett
Almost 100 years after women secured the right to vote in 1920 through the 19th Amendment, we still do not have equal rights under the Constitution. My question for the GOP candidates: Do you support the Equal Rights Amendment? — Jane Fonda
The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party. — Gloria Steinem
We have not ratified The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Among Women. I think 194 countries have signed onto it, but the United States has not. And CEDAW to the United Nations is what the Equal Rights Amendment or the women's equality amendment is to the United States. I think we should pass the women's equality amendment and a lot of these other fights would go away. — Carolyn Maloney
I think in a society where you can't even pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it's very difficult to women make a progress. Incidentally, we are exactly 160 years after the very first women's public rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, when a handful of women started it all and began the movement to make women equal. — Carolyn Maloney
The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment. — Ted Cruz
The meeting [in San Antonio of the National Women's Political Caucus] featured a cattle show at which a herd of Democratic candidates- Glenn, Cranston, Mondale, Hart, and Hollings- pantingly pantomined their fidelity to feminism, stopping just short of a pledge to use nuclear weapons against any states that omit to ratify the Equal Right Amendment. — Daniel Seligman
The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws - I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen. — Howard Zinn
There is no question that under the Equal Rights Amendment there will be debates at times, indecision at times, litigation at times. Has anyone proposed that we rescind the First Amendment on free speech because there is too much litigation over it? Has anyone suggested the same for the Fourteenth Amendment I don't suppose there has ever been a constitutional amendment with so much litigation? — Frances Farenthold
I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom. — Charlton Heston
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of equal rights amendment quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about equal rights amendment to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of equal rights amendment quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
