Throughout the course of human history, many social movements and revolutions share a common tool: The power of words. From the oldest of decrees known all the way to this very moment in which we find ourselves, language has proven time and again to be a powerful ally of those hoping to shape history for the better – as well as a powerful weapon for those who strive toward an opposite goal.
Civil rights leaders have oft used their voices as a force for good. Today, on Juneteenth 2025, we recognize some of those words – while also recognizing that the battle for human rights is ongoing.
Civil rights quotes for Juneteenth 2025
“A democracy cannot thrive where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few. Ignoring these cries and failing to respond to this movement is simply not an option — for peace cannot exist where justice is not served.” — John Lewis
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” – Audre Lorde
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” – Ida B. Wells
“History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable. It happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.” – Marsha P. Johnson
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” – James Baldwin
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”– Nelson Mandela
“The very serious function of racism…is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary.” — Toni Morrison
“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” – Malcolm X
“Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense.” – W.E.B. Du Bois
“If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.” – Harriet Tubman
“I learned that racism, like most systems of oppression, isn’t about bad people doing terrible things to people who are different from them but instead is a way of maintaining power for certain groups at the expense of others.” ― Alicia Garza
“Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper”. – Martin Luther King Jr.
“We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.” ― Sojourner Truth
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”
– Audre Lorde
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
“Each and every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage each and everyone of us to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.” – Laverne Cox
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” – James Baldwin
“Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
– John Lewis
“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.” – Coretta Scott King