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 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 RUSTINWe are all one – and if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.
BAYARD RUSTINLet us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
BAYARD RUSTINWhen you’re wrong, you’re wrong. But when you’re right, you’re wrong anyhow.
BAYARD RUSTINPeople will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.
BAYARD RUSTINIf anyone thinks they’re going to get anything out of the Reagan administration for any particular group, they’re wrong!
BAYARD RUSTINToday, 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.
BAYARD RUSTINYou have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
BAYARD RUSTINThe 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.
BAYARD RUSTINMy 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.
BAYARD RUSTINIf 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.
BAYARD RUSTINTo be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.
BAYARD RUSTINI believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.
BAYARD RUSTINGays 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.
BAYARD RUSTINI would say except when I have been attacked the black community has seldom seen fit to even mention the gay aspect. And since when I have been attacked I have usually been defended by the black community,
BAYARD RUSTINWe need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
BAYARD RUSTIN