Oliver Tambo Quotes

You can't put civil rights on the ballot.

The repeal of racist language in the Constitution of Alabama was and still is a necessary step in the state's ability to progress.

I am not a civil rights leader, and I don't profess to be one.

Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.

There is no such thing as white superiority or black inferiority…all people are equal before God…there may not be under any circumstances a political policy based on oppression, discrimination and exploitation…the task of the Church is to protest against unjust laws.

There are those who say to you we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years too late.

In the 1960’s I was opposed to a system of preferences known as white supremacy. I am still against preferences.

Asserting the equality of all men before the law, we hold that it is the duty of the government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all citizens, of whatever nativity, race or persuasion—religious or political.

He won laurels on the score of his intellectual ability and forensic powers; but if our recollection is not at fault, his ground on the score of humanity towards the oppressed race [Blacks] was too low.

The more conservative element of Negroes differ from those who hold the most radical views in opposition to segregation only in terms of time and technique of its elimination …. all Negroes must condemn any form of segregation based on race, creed or color anywhere in our nation

The Negro people of America... have cut our forests, tilled our fields, built our railroads, fought our battles, and in all of their trials they have manifested a simple faith, a grateful heart, a cheerful spirit, and an undivided loyalty. Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them.

It is not true that enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division based on color is entirely artificial and when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another.

All who abhor the immortality of discrimination and social injustice toward their fellow men must share the impatience of the nation’s Negro Americans and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in full active and affirmative support of their struggle to make a present reality out of the 100 year old Emancipation Proclamation.

Economic, social, and other kinds of regional cooperation are not possible so long as there is apartheid. Therefore, it seems the duty of all mankind to destroy it.

It is important that the strongest pressures against the continuation of segregation, North or South, be continually and constantly manifested. Probably, as much as anything else, this is the key in the elimination of discrimination in the United States.

As a survivor of the 20th-century Race Wars, my back remains unbent, and I move forward for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all who were created equal in God's eyes.

When we say that black lives matter, it's not because others don't: it's simply because we must affirm that we are worthy of existing without fear, when so many things tell us we are not.

I wanted to be as genuine as possible because all those people like Jimmie Lee Jackson - me, Mike Brown, all these people - we're all the same; we're not much different.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

I played an integral part in helpings formulating that new vision... that we must abandon apartheid and accept one united South Africa with equal rights for all, with all forms of discrimination to be scrapped from the statute book.

I want the white people to understand my people.

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

Abhorrence of apartheid is a moral attitude, not a policy.

Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it in South Africa.

I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.