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Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: ‘The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics 2) constitutional means 3) democratic procedures 4) respect for human personality 5) a belief that all people are one.’

Bayard Rustin

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Bayard Rustin
Age: 74 †
Born: 1912
Born: January 1
Died: 1987
Died: January 1
Activist
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Westchester
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More quotes by Bayard Rustin

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Bigotrys birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.
Bayard Rustin
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Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality.
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My activism did not spring from being black...The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family.
Bayard Rustin
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God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.
Bayard Rustin
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Both morally and practically, segregation is to me a basic injustice. Since I believe it to be so, I must attempt to remove it. There are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. (a) One can accept it without protest. (b) On can seek to avoid it. (c) One can resist the injustice non-violently. To accept it is to perpetuate it.
Bayard Rustin
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Every indifference to prejudice is suicide because, if I don’t fight all bigotry, bigotry itself will be strengthened and, sooner or later, it will return on me.
Bayard Rustin
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Since Israel is a democratic state surrounded by essentially undemocratic states which have sworn her destruction, those interested in democracy everywhere must support Israel's existence.
Bayard Rustin
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I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.
Bayard Rustin
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Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God.
Bayard Rustin
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I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.
Bayard Rustin
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When you're wrong, you're wrong. But when you're right, you're wrong anyhow.
Bayard Rustin
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If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.
Bayard Rustin
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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. . .
Bayard Rustin
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Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
Bayard Rustin
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Conscription for war is inconsistent with freedom of conscience, which is not merely the right to believe but to act on the degree of truth that one receives, to follow a vocation which is God-inspired and God-directed.
Bayard Rustin
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The proof that one truly believes is in action.
Bayard Rustin
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We are all one - and if we don't know it, we will learn it the hard way.
Bayard Rustin
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If people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious. And that is the chief reason that every person who is gay should join some gay organization. Because he must prove to the world that he cares about his own freedom.
Bayard Rustin
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We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
Bayard Rustin
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If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherhood. If we can build such a society, then we would have achieved the ultimate goal of human freedom.
Bayard Rustin