Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: ‘The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.’
BAYARD RUSTINThe real radical is that person who has a vision of equality and is willing to do those things that will bring reality closer to that vision. . .
More Bayard Rustin Quotes
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The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn
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We are all one – and if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.
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If anyone thinks they’re going to get anything out of the Reagan administration for any particular group, they’re wrong!
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The proof that one truly believes is in action.
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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.
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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 my grandparents who reared me.
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The Journey of Reconciliation was organized not only to devise techniques for eliminating Jim Crow in travel, but also as a training ground for similar peaceful projects against discrimination in such major areas as employment and in the armed services.
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People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.
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Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it at which point they can become human too.
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If people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious. And that is the chief reason that every person who is gay should join some gay organization. Because he must prove to the world that he cares about his own freedom.
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Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.
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Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.
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We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
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If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will, thereby, have the power to turn on me.
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Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
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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.
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Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God.
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I don’t want to seem intolerant to them and I think we have to say that to them with a great deal of affection, but remaining in the closet is the other side of the prejudice against gays. Because until you challenge it, you are not playing an active role in fighting it.
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Bigotrys birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.
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Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination.
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I would say that the black newspapers have played it very straight. If I was attacked they simply published that I was attacked.
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You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
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The real radical is that person who has a vision of equality and is willing to do those things that will bring reality closer to that vision. . .
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The organizers and perpetuators of segregation are as much the enemy of America as any foreign invader.
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I believe there are certain types of movements which cannot be married.
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My activism did not spring from being black…The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family.
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