Equal Rights Quotes

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
― audre lorde

“I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.”
― Dr. Seuss, Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

“At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.”
― George Clooney

“So, let me get this straight-- You want me to stop being a lesbian and being attracted to women because it is a 'sin'? Last time I checked, when you lie you are sinning. Sure, I could tell you I am no longer a lesbian or that I am no longer attracted to women and am straight, or I could even tell you the moon is made of cheese. I could tell you many things, but the moon will still not be made of cheese, and I will still not be attracted to men. I could tell you a lie in order to placate you, but isn’t the truth supposed to set me free? I choose truth over lies any day of the week. ”
― Cristina Marrero

“The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.”
― Aristotle

“Before you echo 'Amen' in your home or place of worship, think and remember...a child is listening.”
― Mary Griffith

“You have to remember, rights don't come in groups we shouldn't have 'gay rights'; rights come as individuals, and we wouldn't have this major debate going on. It would be behavior that would count, not what person belongs to what group.”
― Ron Paul

“When we exclude half of humanity from the production of knowledge we lose out on potentially transformative insights.”
― Caroline Criado Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“Tell my daughter Elizabeth -- no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life; it gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married. Most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value. And that no matter what everyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours.”
― Dustin Lance Black

“Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice.”
― Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

“We cannot keep turning our backs on gay and lesbian Americans. I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
― John Lewis

“[Button] If Gay and Lesbian people are given civil rights, soon everyone will want them”
― James Howe, Totally Joe

“Equality of condition, though it is certainly a basic requirement for justice, is nevertheless among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of modern mankind. The more equal conditions are, the less explanation there is for the differences that actually exist between people; and thus all the more unequal do individuals and groups become. This perplexing consequence came fully to light as soon as equality was no longer seen in terms of an omnipotent being like God or an unavoidable common destiny like death. Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be recognized simply as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mistaken for an innate quality of every individual, who is “normal” if he is like everybody else and “abnormal” if he happens to be different. This perversion of equality from a political into a social concept is all the more dangerous when a society leaves but little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Sure, I could tell you I am no longer a lesbian or that I am no longer attracted to women and am straight, or I could even tell you the moon is made of cheese. I could tell you many things, but the moon will still not be made of cheese, and I will still not be attracted to men.”
― Cristina Marrero

“Thought
Of equality- as if it harm'd me,
giving others the same chances
and rights as myself-
as if it were not indispensable
to my own rights
that others possess the same.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America”
― Paul Robeson

“We are involved now in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, "My party is the party of principles?”
― John Lewis, March: Book Two

“I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.” Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the Literature of Negroes. Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Political correctness' as 'over-sensitivity' is code for saying the privileged shouldn't have their unearned privileges questioned.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“When the owner fired me, he said he was sorry, since he admired what I was trying to do. Really? What was it, exactly, that I was trying to do? Oh right. Something about equality.”
― JoeAnn Hart, Stamford '76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s

“BL series play an important role in creating a space where people feel they're not alone. Seeing characters on screen who reflect your own identity or feelings is deeply meaningful. It reinforces the idea that all forms of love are beautiful and equally valuable, and helps push society toward greater openness and inclusion.”
― Noeul Nuttarat Tangwai

“The average colored person is ten times smarter, wiser, braver, and stronger, than most white people, not because we are genetically superior, but because, when an entire planet is rigged in favor of white colonials over the black, the brown, the latino, arab, indian, chinese, turk, and what not, we have to be exceptional to survive.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Real spirituality isn't scented with lavender, but soaked in sweat of struggle for equality.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“I'm a homing pigeon, and I'm homing in on integration - and since there is no such thing, I'm building my homeworld person by person.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“In English we say: the grass is greener on the other side. In Naskarian we say: Earth is greener when it belongs to all.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“If we cared more about social responsibility than social etiquette, we wouldn't have such drastic paradoxes of disparity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Proof of Sapiens (Sonnet 2403)

If a 3 pound brain can contain
a 100 billion nerve cells,
a planet with land the size of
20 billion stadiums should have
room for 10 billion people.

Then how come, so many
have to survive on so little,
on a planet this size, this rich!

It all comes down to hoarding - if we
cared more about social responsibility
than social etiquette, we wouldn't have
such drastic paradoxes of disparity.

In English we say:
proof of the pudding is in the eating.
In Naskarian we say:
proof of the Sapiens is in the sharing.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop