Jim Ramstad Quotes

I think social justice is important. I think it's not fair.

Each year on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, America has the opportunity to reflect on our nation's progress towards the realization of his dream.

The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.

Brown v. Board is the foundation by which all Americans can look for hope - hope for their children, hope for their families, and hope for a better future.

We will not build a society that reflects who we are and that has opportunities for equality or justice if we don't make progress for all participants.

While our country has made great strides in breaking down the barriers which for so long denied equal opportunity to all Americans, we are not yet the beautiful symphony of brotherhood of Dr. King's dream.

We are justified in believing that the success of this movement for equality of the sexes means more progress toward equality of the races.

While nothing is perfect or complete in the battle for civil rights, the efforts of Dr. King and those like him have in fact, changed the country and the world for the better in noticeable ways. His vision has made the world a more equal place, and if not equal, it has helped to ensure that minorities have a voice.

Because of the Civil Rights movement, new doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody ... Not just for blacks and whites, but also women and Latinos; and Asians and Native Americans; and gay Americans and Americans with a disability. They swung open for you, and they swung open for me. And that's why I'm standing here today-because of those efforts, because of that legacy.

I think freedom means freedom for everybody.

I have tried to defend what is most precious to our American society, a society that is now at war against the forces of racial intolerance.A big part of me making the decision was how important the play is for the times that we live in. This is a classic. It's a masterpiece of American playwriting. It's about discrimination and it's about we Mexicans being a target for so many years.

One day. my kids are gonna be like, 'What do you mean, gay people couldn't get married?' Just like most of my friends are black, and I find it hard to believe that my great-grandmother and even my grandmother couldn't hang out with black kids when they were young.

I feel like in 10 or 15 years' time our children are going to look back and say, 'What? You were around when gay people weren't allowed to get married?'

It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.

This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

The rights of women are to the 21st century what civil rights were to the 20th.

Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.

And my mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone.

If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom.

There are no acceptable limits and no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century.

I am groping about through this American forest of prejudice and proscription, determined to find some form of civilization where all men will be accepted for what they are worth.

In approaching this problem [school desegregation], we cannot turn the clock back...

We must continue to prove to the world that we can provide a rising standard of living for all men without loss of civil rights or human dignity to any man.

The arc of our history is toward more equality being expanded to more and more people.