Top 1200 Civil Quotes & Sayings

The field of research in the doctrine of civil resistance is necessarily limited, as the occasions for civil resistance in a man's life must not be frequent.

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

Even if Iraq IS a civil war, people have won civil wars.

All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship.

The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.

A second line is in effect a civil rights demonstration. Literally, demonstrating the civil right of the community to assemble in the street for peaceful purposes. Or, more simply, demonstrating the civil right of the community to exist.

Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.

Ours is a civil fight, and imprisonment as a civil prisoner has got to be earned by the strict observance of the programme.

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.

We are losing each day an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.

Even here in America, people are fighting for civil rights 45 years after the civil rights movement.

We are in a new Civil War, and just like the last, it is a struggle for the sanctity of the Union - and it's hardly civil.

When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.

I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.

You can choose to be civil or not be civil. What is the point of going through the day and think it's cool to wear your honesty on your sleeve at the expense of everyone around you?

The first duty of government is to protect the citizen from assault. Unless it does this, all the civil rights and civil liberties in the world aren't worth a dime.

Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke.

George Washington was quite a farmer. He was a farmer, Civil Engineer and gentleman. He made enough at civil engineering to indulge in both the other luxuries.

Yes, what has happened is we have moved from responding to these terrorist attacks as acts of civil disobedience to getting to the point after September 11 that we said, no, this is not just civil disobedience, this is an act of war.

That's when civil liberty suffers - when we think special times justify the diminution of civil liberties. And I'm not going to accept that.

I think it's alright if the government wants to say, in the state of Massachusetts, in the state of New York, in the state of California, that civil ceremonies should be accepted, I think that should be fine. I don't think that even those states that believe in civil marriages between homosexuals or ordained in a church should perform civil ceremonies.

I am very proud of the fact that I led the arts contingent on the civil rights march in the summer of '63. In many ways, I think it was the high-water mark of the civil rights movement.

A false worship will not hurt the civil state if the worshipper breaks no civil law.

I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership. The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.

In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to 'civil master.'

Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.

In the view of some people, you can only believe in civil rights if you work as a civil rights lawyer. I just don't buy that.

where civil blood makes civil hands unclean

Before civil disobedience can be practised on a vast scale, people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience.

[Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964], many governments in southern states forced people to segregate by race. Civil rights advocates fought to repeal these state laws, but failed. So they appealed to the federal government, which responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But this federal law didn't simply repeal state laws compelling segregation. It also prohibited voluntary segregation. What had been mandatory became forbidden. Neither before nor after the Civil Rights Act were people free to make their own decisions about who they associated with.

They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they've known ever since it happened, and they've done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain.

Contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.

Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.

I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There's a vanity to candor that isn't really worth it. Be kind.

The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction.

So about 80 years after the Constitution is ratified, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it of course; just kinda on paper. And that of course was at the end of the Civil War. Now there is another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one: "Civil War." Do you think anybody in this country could ever really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me?" (shoots gun) "I'm awfully sorry. Awfully sorry."

It's so simple: Right to marriage is a civil right, which like all civil rights should not depend on what state you happen to live in.

I'm not super-polite or civil - I try to be civil, but I'm not into Seattle's niceties, and I'm not hugely wired into Seattle's natural beauty.

Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.

The Civil War is not ended: I question whether any serious civil war ever does end.

I'm working on a script right about Civil War re-enactors who go back in time to the actual Civil War. It's kind of a big, crazy Back to the Future comedy. So, of course, it's the Civil War - I play the banjo. I was just having a conversation with one of the producers about some of the material and he was like, 'You know, we have to work in a scene where you play the banjo. And I was like I'll get behind that.

It's not a question of being out of touch or traditional. It's a question of wanting to preserve marriage as uniquely between a man and a woman. Gays get full civil rights with civil partnerships anyway.

When I was little, I wanted to be a civil engineer. Not a ballerina, not a doctor, a civil engineer. I was such a nerd.

Historians have often censored civil rights activists' commitment to economic issues and misrepresented the labor and civil rights movements as two separate, sometimes adversarial efforts. But civil rights and workers' rights are two sides of the same coin.

The state says: "Well, in order for it to be legitimate civil disobedience, you have to follow these rules." They put us in "free-speech zones"; they say you can only do it at this time, and in this way, and you can't interrupt the functioning of the government. They limit the impact that civil disobedience can achieve. We have to remember that civil disobedience must be disobedience if it's to be effective.

The U.S. Constitution has absorbed the end of slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and Watergate.

An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.

For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of the University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement.

Civil government is an ordinance of God, to conserve the civil peace of a people, so far as concerns their bodies and goods.

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.

You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.

Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together.

It was not until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s that Congress got serious about the assignment laid out in the post-Civil War amendments.

Where race is concerned, America has had a horrible, a wretched history and that came to account in the 1960s, with the Civil Rights victories and Civil Rights Bill and housing and so forth.

No Republican questions or disputes civil rights. I have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the civil rights act.

Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.

It was a privilege to serve as the assistant attorney general for civil rights, a role that allowed me to enforce the Civil Rights Act and help make its promise a reality.

One thing that has gone away from civil discussion in America is this idea that our neighbors are not out to ruin the world. We need to come at it from a civil place.

It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.