The best Quotes from The Great Debaters

No, the time for justice, the time for freedom, and the time for equality is always right now!

We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.

St Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all." Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.

The majority does not decide what is right or wrong. Your conscience does.

We must never ever bow down before the tyranny of the majority.

Debate is combat. Your words are your weapons.

Nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. No matter what name we give it.

Melvin B. Tolson: "We're holding tryouts for the debate team."
Henry Lowe: "You sure you want somebody like me?"
Melvin B. Tolson: "No. That's why you're trying out."

School's the only place you can read all day. Except prison.

I and every professor on this campus are here to help you to find, take back, and keep your righteous mind... because obviously you have lost it.

The state is currently spending five times more for the education for a white child than it is fitting to educate a colored child. That means better textbooks for that child than for that child. I say that's a shame, but my opponent says today is not the day for whites and coloreds to go to the same college. To share the same campus. To walk into the same classroom. Well, would you kindly tell me when that day is gonna come? Is it going to come tomorrow? Is it going to come next week? In a hundred years? Never? No, the time for justice, the time for freedom, and the time for equality is always, is always right now!

A brilliant young woman I know was asked once to support her argument in favor of social welfare. She named the most powerful source imaginable: the look in a mother's face when she cannot feed her children. Can you look that hungry child in the eyes? See the blood on his feet from working barefoot in the cotton fields. Or do you ask his baby sister with her belly swollen from hunger if she cares about her daddy's work ethics?

My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you're prepared for it.

In Los Angeles, everyone is a star.

Your cells age at half the rate of a normal human. When you're 40, you'll still have the leucocytes of a teenager.

I will escape for every innocent woman whose life was stolen.