A Quote by Madison Smartt Bell

The country is too often assumed to be a backward place: The First World has trouble remembering that Haitians were two centuries ahead of us in abolishing slavery and in extending full rights of citizenship to everyone, regardless of race.

Madison Smartt Bell

Quote Topics

Abolishing Slavery Assumed Backward Centuries Citizenship Country Everyone Extending First First World Full Often Place Race Regardless Remembering Rights Slavery Too Trouble Two Us Were World

Quote Author

Madison Smartt Bell
American - Novelist
Born: August 1, 1957

For centuries, faith has helped us overcome problems and helped us work to achieve a more perfect union. It has inspired the many leaders who played a key role in abolishing slavery, protecting civil rights and, hopefully one day, becoming a nation where all life from conception to natural death is protected.

Marco Rubio

To take on the question of race in America and believe that you could transform this country so that it would actually be a place that was welcoming for everyone that was here, including dealing with the history of slavery and the kind of oppression this country is based on, that's an amazing moment to begin to find your own political ideals.

Amber Hollibaugh

Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind.

Elizabeth Keckley

My crime is that I will not go with the multitude to do evil. My singularity is that when I say that freedom is of God and slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is that I insist on the American people abolishing slavery, or ceasing to prate on the rights of man.

William Lloyd Garrison

We are all one family in the world. Building a community that empowers everyone to attain their full potential through each of us respecting each other's dignity, rights and responsibilities makes the world a better place to live.

Pope John Paul II

We need to guarantee equal rights and civil rights and say that, here in America, workers have the right to organize - women have the right to choose - and justice belongs to everyone regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation.

John F. Kerry

The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this is country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.

Medgar Evers

I dare to imagine a country where every child I hold in my hands, are all God's children, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of whether they're boy or girl, regardless of religion, regardless of rich or poor, that every child I hold in my hands, will have the same chance to reach her full potential or his full potential. That is the goodness of our country. That is the essence of the American dream.

Paul Wellstone

Our world needs to move from managing crises to preventing them in the first place. Too often, the world responds too late and too little.

Antonio Guterres

Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet. The shame doesn't even belong to us, but we still experience it because we're a part of the African race. If it happened to one, it happened to all. We carry that burden.

Lupita Nyong'o

Like probably a lot of people, I came away from watching films like 'Miss Representation' and 'Half the Sky' with the realization that the battle for women's rights is not over, especially not globally, and that the moral imperative of our century is to achieve full rights for everyone regardless of gender.

Adora Svitak

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.

Patrick Young

The current practice of extending U.S. citizenship to hundreds of thousands of 'anchor babies' must end because it creates a magnet for illegal immigration into our country. Now is the time to ensure that the laws in this country do not encourage law-breaking.

Steve King

The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.

Medgar Evers

Those who wish to change things may face disappointment, loss, or even ridicule. If you are ahead of your time, people laugh as often as they applaud, and being there first is usually lonely. But our protection cannot come between us and our purpose. Right protection is something within us rather than something between us and the world, more about finding a place of refuge and strength than finding a hiding place.