“Justice means that every child deserves a chance to grow up safe and secure, without the threat of violence. Justice means that the punishment should fit the crime. And justice means allowing our fellow Americans who have made mistakes to pay their debt to society, and re-join their community as act…”— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov
“I’m here to say we must reject such despair. I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds. I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life, what I’ve seen of this country and its p…”— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov
“This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across th…”— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov
“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.”— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov
“Look at the faces here around you, and you see an America that is more fair and more free and more just than the one Dr. King addressed that day. We are right to savor that slow but certain progress -– progress that’s expressed itself in a million ways, large and small, across this nation every sing…”— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov
“How much time will I spend finding the correct words to say that the color of a person’s skin is not justification for ending their life? And how much time will elapse until those words mean anything to the people who actually kill us?”— Kara Brown, jezebel.com
“Protest is this idea of telling the truth in public, and I’ll never be afraid to tell the truth. What I heard in the jail cell and the conversations we had is that the arrests will not stop people from telling the truth, and that people remain as committed to this work today as they were two days ag…”— Deray Mckesson, yahoo.com
“Black women, we see you. We love you. We are with you and we believe in your leadership.”— Common, billboard.com
“The reality is this is a peaceful human rights movement led by incredibly courageous black people. I think we are demanding justice and freedom for our people.”— Opal Tometi, cleveland19.com
“It seems that it's either pro-cop and anti-black or pro-black and anti-cop, when, in reality, you can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we should all be. It is what we should be aiming for.”— Trevor Noah, cc.com
“I wasn’t surprised about what happened in Baltimore, because of what we had seen in Ferguson. I don’t believe in rioting and all, but I know peaceful protesters are very hard to be seen. What I see with Baltimore, Ferguson and other mass protests is what has been given birth is the Black Lives Matte…”— Arthur Reed, a.k.a Silky Slim, ijr.com
“Because this? This is not justice, or peace, or progress. It reeks of death, the stench of corrupt power wielders, it reeks of silence, of institutionalized murder, of heartbreak, of irreparable damages; this feels like waterboarding, like syndicated torture for the masses.”— Joel Leon, medium.com
“Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problems: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.’”— Martin Luther King Jr., amazon.com
“We are reminded once again of how the justice system can be used as a white man’s plaything.”— Ranjeni Munusamy, theguardian.com
“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil -- black gold! -- ghettoizin…”— Jesse Williams, billboard.com
“If you have a critique for our resistance then you’d better have an established record, a critique of our oppression.”— Jesse Williams, billboard.com
“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.”— Jesse Williams, billboard.com
“I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”— Lemony Snicket, amazon.com
“A market economy is beneficial for productivity and economic freedom. But if we let the quest for profits dominate society; if workers become disposable cogs of the financial system; if vast inequalities of power and wealth lead to marginalization of the poor and the powerless; then the common good…”— Bernie Sanders, time.com
“And then one day it hit me. Something of real consequence was happening. We were at the start of a great renaissance of public shaming. After a lull of almost 180 years (public punishments were phased out in 1837 in the United Kingdom and in 1839 in the United States), it was back in a big way. When…”— Jon Ronson, amazon.com