Quotes by Bayard Rustin
We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers.
The Quakers are famous for other things than oats.
When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.
Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.
When I take my hand back away from the wall, the wall returns to being just a wall.
The only weapons we have are the weapons of the spirit.
Those of us who believe in freedom must be willing to fight for it.
If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence.
We must learn to honor dissenters and to respect the right of the individual to live and to serve humanity in his own way.
When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
Our job is to make the future more visible, not to predict it.
The time is always right to do what is right.
We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.
We beggars are given our one chance to save the world each day.
Education is one of the vital paths out of poverty, limiting the impact of past injustices by increasing access to economic opportunity.
If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence.
The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place.
We must learn to honor dissenters and to respect the right of the individual to live and to serve humanity in his own way.
We are all one. And if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.
The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest.
Those of us who believe in freedom must be willing to fight for it.
The time is always right to do what is right.
The utilization of force alone is but temporary. It may endure for a minute, an hour, a day, or even a year, but in the end, it will subside.
When I take my hand back away from the wall, the wall returns to being just a wall.
We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
What I want to say to you, is that I think you ought to hate a system in which you live and for which you are responsible.
My activism did not spring from my being gay, or, for that matter, from my being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values that were instilled in me by Joe and Julia Rustin.
We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable.
The only weapons we have is the weapons of the spirit.
We must bring the nation to realize that it is perilously close to savagery.
You must recognize that the way to get the kinds equality the Negro needs is to get everything else the Negro needs too.
The fight for freedom must begin in the heart of every individual.
Those of us who believe in freedom must be willing to fight for it.
We must accept our own responsibility for the future.
What we have to deal with is the background of belief which the white man brought here from Europe.
The combination of reasonable talent with the ability to keep secrets is more compelling than genius without the ability to keep secrets.
We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.
In every event, racism, whether in the South or the North, is a means to an economic end.
The willingness of the American Negro to listen and learn bore great fruit out of this special relationship.
It is not enough to be a talented artist. One must also be a responsible citizen.
The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others.
It is not enough to be a talented artist. One must also be a responsible citizen.
When we are silent about our pain, they will kill us and say we enjoyed it.
We have tried to ignore the Negro. We have suppressed the Negro according to their sex. And so, therefore, we have ignored them as people.
I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.
We are all one. And if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.
The job of civil rights activists is not to fix a system that is broken, but to create a new system that works for everyone.