Quotes · Skopia

10 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Social progress✕clear

Political literature

The march of social progress is like a long and straggling parade, with the seers and prophets at its head and a smug minority bringing up the rear.

1968

★ 1.8

Song · Folk music

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe We shall overcome, some day.

We Shall Overcome · 1962

★ 1.9

Maybe you can't override prejudice overnight, but the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, ninety-odd years ago. I believe in gradualism. I also believe that ninety-odd years is pretty gradual.

Thurgood Marshall

1987

★ 1.9

Believe it or not-and I know that most people do not-violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined · 2011

★ 3.5

Song · Soul music

Ooh, child, things are gonna get easier Ooh child, things'll get brighter.

The Five Stairsteps

Ooh Child (song) · 1970

★ 3.7

Speech · Political speech

The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.

1965

★ 3.9

Open letter · Letter

"Wait" has almost always meant "Never."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail · 1963

★ 4.0

Speech · Political speech

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

Frederick Douglass

1857

★ 7.0

I was born by the river In a little tent And just like the river I've been runnin' ever since It's been a long, a long time comin' But I know a change gon' come.

A Change Is Gonna Come · 1964

★ 7.0

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one... But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Theodore Parker

1853

★ 8.7