Clay Aiken Quotes

What's more important is that we talk about movements; change happens through movements. The movement to end slavery, the movement to bring justice for those who have been left out of the system, movements to include women, movements around sexual preference - all these movements brought about change.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

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

It is time to put policy ahead of politics and success ahead of the status quo.

There are two sides to reconciliation; the law aspect and the moral values. Unless there is improvement for both, changes will not come by easily

The New Deal ultimately undermined Jim Crow’s prospects. The very legislation embraced by Southern segregationists created at first mere chinks, then whole openings for social change that were grasped by an incipient, soon powerful, movement for equal rights for Blacks.

We would be in trouble as a society if there wasn't a constant pressure to make reforms and to be just.

Part of our history includes the long struggle to pass the Chicago Human Rights Ordinance.

Progress is possible, but it is fragile - and across our country, the battles for our most basic civil rights rage on.

The march to freedom is irreversible.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

I'm not a communist, a socialist or a radical. But these issues have to be addressed.

The real radical is that person who has a vision of equality and is willing to do those things that will bring reality closer to that vision. . .

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.

How blind to believe the civil rights movement ever ended. The civil rights movement never ends, and it never will. It has been marching since the beginning of time. Where Martin Luther King started is where Gandhi left off, and where he started, Abe Lincoln left off, and before that Whitfield all the way back to Moses. God has not moved. We have. But it is never too late. We are not at the mercy of these events. We can alter the course of history. We can stand against the dangerous arc of this story. But we need people who are willing to speak truth.

In my view it is time to pass a good bill, a fair bill, a comprehensive bill ... Too many have been waiting too long for fairness.

The civil rights situation is like a pregnancy. It will get worse, I believe, before it gets better. What the usual pregnancy comes to is a decent baby. That is what we all hope will be the end product of this stress. It is customary, at the end of a pregnancy, to have for your pains a decent baby.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

One thing that I'd just remind young people of is that when John Lewis, who's a member of Congress today, defied George Wallace and led the march from Selma to Montgomery, he was 23 years old. Martin Luther King was the old man in the bunch, and he was 35, so young people need to know that they've always been an important part of our society, have always been at the forefront of pushing for a more just America, and we can't be successful without the impatience, the vigor that young people bring to the fight for social justice.

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?'

I know that my race must change.

There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.

I think that civil rights issues take a lot of time to develop.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

We are the friends of reform; but that is not reform, which, in curing one evil, threatens to inflict a thousand others.