Bayard Rustin Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Bayard Rustin's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Activist Bayard Rustin's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 44 quotes on this page collected since March 17, 1912! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • If we want to do away with the injustice to gays it will not be done because we get rid of the injustice to gays. It will be done because we are forwarding the effort for the elimination of injustice to all. And we will win the rights for gays, or blacks, or Hispanics, or women within the context of whether we are fighting for all.

    Source: kalamu.com
  • 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.

  • 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.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.404, Simon and Schuster
  • 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.

    Bayard Rustin (2012). “I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters”, p.366, City Lights Publishers
  • 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.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.81, Simon and Schuster
  • The organizers and perpetuators of segregation are as much the enemy of America as any foreign invader.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.82, Simon and Schuster
  • 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 (1971). “Down the line”, Quadrangle-New York Times Book Co.
  • 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.

  • The moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself.

  • 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.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.6, Simon and Schuster
  • 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.

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

  • You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.397, Simon and Schuster
  • We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.

  • 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. 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.

  • 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.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.196, Simon and Schuster
  • 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.

    Source: kalamu.com
  • The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don't turn

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

    Source: kalamu.com
  • We are all one - and if we don't know it, we will learn it the hard way.

  • Conscription for war is inconsistent with freedom of conscience, which is not merely the right to believe but to act on the degree of truth that one receives, to follow a vocation which is God-inspired and God-directed.

    Bayard Rustin (2012). “I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters”, p.11, City Lights Publishers
  • 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. 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.

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

    Source: kalamu.com
  • 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.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.409, Simon and Schuster
  • When you're wrong, you're wrong. But when you're right, you're wrong anyhow.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.107, Simon and Schuster
  • You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people. Therefore join the movement as individuals against anti-Semitism, join the movements for the rights of Hispanics, the rights of women, the rights of gays. In other words, I think that each movement has to stand on its own feet because it has a particular agenda, but it can ask other people.

    Source: kalamu.com
  • I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.

    Bayard Rustin (2003). “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin”, p.81, Simon and Schuster
  • 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.’

  • 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.

  • 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.

    Bayard Rustin (2012). “I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters”, p.11, City Lights Publishers
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 44 quotes from the Activist Bayard Rustin, starting from March 17, 1912! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!

    Bayard Rustin

    • Born: March 17, 1912
    • Died: August 24, 1987
    • Occupation: Activist