Rosa Parks

I had no idea when I refused to give up my seat on that Montgomery bus that my small action would help put an end to the segregation laws in the South.

I did not get on the bus to get arrested; I got on the bus to go home.

I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is any such thing as complete happiness.

Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that held its ground.

I had felt for a long time that if I was ever told to get up so a white person could sit, that I would refuse to do so.

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.

I was a person with dignity and self-respect, and I should not set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black.

The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.

I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.

All I was doing was trying to get home from work.

I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons had taught us we were entitled to, no matter what the sacrifice.

I was not afraid. I was resigned to give what I could to protect against the way I was being treated.

I was not the only person who had been mistreated and humiliated. I was not the only person who had been arrested for this sort of thing. I was just one of many.

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free and wanted others to be free.

The only way to stop discrimination is to stand up to it.

I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn’t take it anymore. When I asked the driver why he was treating me like this, he said, 'I'll have you arrested.'

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being an old lady then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

To this day I wonder why I was spared that time. Many others were not.

There were times when it would have been easy to give up and give in, but I was determined to hold my ground.

Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it.