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1. black
2. grey
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4. red
5. brown
6. white

I am a Quaker. And as everyone knows, Quakers, for 300 years, have, on conscientious ground, been against participating in war. I was sentenced to three years in federal prison because I could not religiously and conscientiously accept killing my fellow man.

Bayard Rustin

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More Bayard Rustin Quotes

• 

  The new ‘niggers’ are gays. It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.

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• 

  We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.

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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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• 

  if I was defended they simply said I had been defended. But I don’t think they have taken any effort at maligning me or maligning gays or making any effort to give to people anything that wasn’t news.

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• 

  You have to all combine and fight a head-on battle – in the name of justice and equality – and even that’s going to be difficult. But if we let ourselves get separated so that we’re working for gays or school children or the aged, we’re in trouble.

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• 

  Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.

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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 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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• 

  I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.

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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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• 

  If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherhood. If we can build such a society, then we would have achieved the ultimate goal of human freedom.

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• 

  When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn’t be here. You’re going to Mississippi to create social change and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children.

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• 

  I believe there are certain types of movements which cannot be married.

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• 

  To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.

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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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• 

  Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.

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