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.
BAYARD RUSTINWhen you’re wrong, you’re wrong. But when you’re right, you’re wrong anyhow.
More Bayard Rustin Quotes
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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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You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
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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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Gays are beginning to realize what blacks learned long ago: Unless you are out here fighting for yourself then nobody else will help you. I think the gay community has a moral obligation to continue the fight.
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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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When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. But when you’re right, you’re wrong anyhow.
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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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Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality.
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There are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. (a) One can accept it without protest. (b) On can seek to avoid it. (c) One can resist the injustice non-violently. To accept it is to perpetuate it.
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I believe there are certain types of movements which cannot be married.
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Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.
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Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
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Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.
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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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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. . .
BAYARD RUSTIN