“People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.”

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.

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

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.

If anyone thinks they’re going to get anything out of the Reagan administration for any particular group, they’re wrong!

We are all one – and if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard 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.

Both morally and practically, segregation is to me a basic injustice. Since I believe it to be so, I must attempt to remove it.

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. . .

The organizers and perpetuators of segregation are as much the enemy of America as any foreign invader.

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.

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

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.

I would say that the black newspapers have played it very straight. If I was attacked they simply published that I was attacked.

Every indifference to prejudice is suicide because, if I don’t fight all bigotry, bigotry itself will be strengthened and, sooner or later, it will return on me.

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.’

God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.

If you fight you won’t always win. But if you don’t fight you will always lose

When I am in form, my style is a little bit stubborn, almost brutal. Sometimes I feel a great spirit of fight which drives me on.

The problem was Mike Tyson always had trouble with bigger men.

And whereas women had to fight to find their way into the workforce, men are now fighting to reclaim their place in the family structure.

The Palestinians fight for their rights and their land using stones and catapults but the Israelis retaliate with disproportional and overwhelming power by using bullets and bombs thus killing so many innocent civilians

I believe in, and will to the best of my ability fight for, equal rights and freedom of opinion for everyone, regardless of colour, religion, nationality, orientation – you know the rest.

I once asked him what came at the end of the sentence… and he said “parole”.

Hopkins is talking about fighting at Yankee Stadium but that’s rubbish. If he fought at Yankee Stadium, even the ushers wouldn’t want to watch him. Bernard Hopkins couldn’t draw breath.