Maya Angelou quotes about justice & the law

Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else's freedom.

Never give up on him. Never deny him. And remember, he is freer than those who hold him behind bars.

I know now that until the lowliest Negro sharecropper in the South is free, I am not free.

Black people are letting white Americans know that the time is coming for ballots or bullets.

Sister, in this country a Negro is always about to get killed, so that ain't nothing. But you tell your husband that a black man was ready to lay down his life for you. That's all.

The root cause of racism and its primary result is that whites refuse to see us simply as people.

Permit? If we left it to you whites we'd be in the same shape as our folks in South Africa. We'd have to have a permit to breathe.

I'll put my foot in that door up to my hip until women of every color can walk over my foot, get in that union, get aboard a ship and go to sea.

Georgia is Down South. California is Up South. If you're black in this country, you're on a plantation.

The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory.

Diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.

Each of us must care enough for ourselves to be ready and able to come to our own self-defense.

See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.

It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness.

Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.