Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Ruby Bridges
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist Ruby Bridges.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
I'm not a very public person.
I think that racism is ugly and so unfair, and I believe that we all need one another.
What I do remember about first grade and that year was that it was very lonely. I didn't have any friends, and I wasn't allowed to go to the cafeteria or play on the playground. What bothered me most was the loneliness in school every day.
If we are about what is good today, then we that are good need to come together to fight what's bad out there.
You cannot look at a person and tell whether they're good or bad.
I believe that we have to come together, and we have to rely on the goodness of each other.
A lot of my strength came from my upbringing.
If you really think about it, if we begin to teach history exactly the way that it happened - good, bad, ugly, no matter what - I believe that we're going to find that we are closer, more connected than we are apart.
I felt like there was something I needed to do - speaking to kids and sharing my story with them and helping them understand racism has no place in the minds and hearts of children.
We'd get these boxes of clothing in the mail, and my mom would say, 'What makes you think all this is for you? You've got a sister right behind you.' So then I realized, we're all in this together. We have to help each other.
Somehow, it always worked. Kneeling at the side of my bed and talking to the Lord made everything okay.
I remember turning onto the street. I saw barricades and police officers and, just, people everywhere. When I saw all of that, I immediately thought that it was Mardi Gras. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of the school.
Evil isn't prejudiced. It doesn't care what you look like; it just wants a place to rest. It's up to you whether you give it that place.
It's not who you're going to sit beside at school that matters now: it's what resources will your school have.
Schools should be diverse if we are to get past racial differences.
I had never seen a white teacher before, but Mrs. Henry was the nicest teacher I ever had.
Once my school was integrated, and I was there with white kids and a few black kids, it really didn't matter to us what we looked like.
It's time to get past our racial differences. We owe it to our children to help them keep their clean start.
My mother had taught me that the only thing you could depend on was your faith, and I had that.
I believe it doesn't do yourself any good to hate.
We must absolutely take care of one another.
When the scary subject of race is finally broached, kids want to talk and talk. It's very satisfying.
Evil looks like you and I. I know what evil looks like, and I know that it comes in all shades and colors.
We have tolerance, respect, and equality in our written laws but not in the hearts of some of our people.
We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.
The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry's class was the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to teach us all: Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper.
I remember the first time seeing myself on TV, when my family was watching the documentary 'Eyes on the Prize' for the first time. There were pictures of people going up the school stairs, and Mom said, 'Oh, that's you!' I said, 'I can't believe this. This is important.'
The people I passed every morning as I walked up the school's steps were full of hate. They were white, but so was my teacher, who couldn't have been more different from them. She was one of the most loving people I had ever known.
I wanted to use my experience to teach kids that racism has no place in hearts and minds.
If my mama said not to do something, I didn't do it.
We all have a common enemy, and it is evil.
That's really what my work is all about - bringing kids together.
From age 7 to about 37, I had a normal life and not a very easy one.
Racism is a form of hate. We pass it on to our young people. When we do that, we are robbing children of their innocence.
Kids really don't care about what their friends look like.
Now that I'm a parent, I know that my parents were incredibly brave.
As African-Americans, people of that generation felt pretty much if they were going to see changes in the world, they had to make sacrifices and step up to the plate. I'm very proud that my parents happened to be people who did. They were not privileged to have a formal education.
I've seen schools in Detroit where the windows are broken, where there's no heat, and children are sitting with their coats on in class in the middle of a snowstorm. I've also seen schools in California with Olympic-sized swimming pools and cafeterias like five-star restaurants.
We have to take care of each other's children.
All of our schools should be good enough to attract a healthy racial mix, which, I believe, leads to the most effective learning for everybody.
My mother and our pastor always said you have to pray for your enemies and people who do you wrong, and that's what I did.
It's taken me a long time to own the early part of my life.
I would dream that this coffin had wings, and it would fly around my bed at night, and so it was a dream that happened a lot, and that's what frightened me.
You cannot look at a person and judge him or her by the color of their skin.
Kids come into the world with clean hearts, fresh starts.
The mission of the Ruby Bridges Foundation is to create educational opportunities like science camp that allow children from different racial, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds to build lasting relationships.
When I think about our babies today and them not being safe in school, I think that should be the next civil rights movement, you know, is to ban the assault weapons so that our babies can be safe.
We as African Americans knew that if we wanted to see change, we had to step up to the plate and make that change ourselves. Not everyone comes to that realization in their lives, but thank God Linda Brown's father felt that way.
Throughout my life, my prayers have actively sustained me - held me up, carried me through.
Every day, I would show up, and there were no kids, just me and my teacher in my classroom. Every day, I would be escorted by marshals past a mob of people protesting and boycotting the school. This went on for a whole year.
I believe in my prayers.
Our babies know nothing about hate or racism. But soon they begin to learn - and only from us.
Wisdom is a gift but has nothing to do with age. That was probably the case with me.
I think racism is something that is passed on and taught to our kids, and that's a shame.
What we, as African Americans, stood on was our faith.
Racism is a grown-up disease, and we should stop using our kids to spread it.
I pray for my enemies, that God would forgive them.
I do think that some people are born as old souls.
I was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.
Administrations and administrative faculty work very hard to see that schools are diverse as much as possible.
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