Quote

When you're wrong, you're wrong. But when you're right, you're wrong anyhow.

Bayard Rustin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bayard Rustin
Age: 74 †
Born: 1912
Born: January 1
Died: 1987
Died: January 1
Activist
Civil Rights Advocate
Lgbtiq+ Rights Activist
Politician
Trade Unionist
Westchester
Pennsylvania
Anyhow
Racism
Wrong
Right

More quotes by Bayard Rustin

Image
The proof that one truly believes is in action.
Bayard Rustin
Image
People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.
Bayard Rustin
Image
If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will, thereby, have the power to turn on me.
Bayard Rustin
Image
To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.
Bayard Rustin
Image
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.
Bayard Rustin
Image
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
Image
We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
Bayard Rustin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I believe there are certain types of movements which cannot be married.
Bayard Rustin
Image
Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
Bayard Rustin
Image
We are all one - and if we don't know it, we will learn it the hard way.
Bayard Rustin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.
Bayard Rustin
Image
The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don't turn
Bayard Rustin
Image
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
Image
Gays are beginning to realize what blacks learned long ago: Unless you are out here fighting for yourself then nobody else will help you. I think the gay community has a moral obligation to continue the fight.
Bayard Rustin
Image
The Journey of Reconciliation was organized not only to devise techniques for eliminating Jim Crow in travel, but also as a training ground for similar peaceful projects against discrimination in such major areas as employment and in the armed services.
Bayard Rustin