139 Quotes by Rosa Parks

"Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way."

"It was not pre-arranged. It just happened that the driver made a demand and I just didn't feel like obeying his demand. I was quite tired after spending a full day working."

"I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen."

"My only concern was to get home after a hard day's work."

"We've got an urban area with very few middle-class citizens in it, ... I don't think anything could bring me back."

"When the history of this country is written, when a final accounting is done, it is this small, quiet woman whose name will be remembered long after the names of senators and presidents have been forgotten."

"When they stood up and I stayed where I was, he asked me if I was going to stand and I told him that 'no, I wasn't,' and he told me if I did not stand up he was going to have me arrested. And, I told him to go on and have me arrested,"

"she stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."

"I didn't want to. I didn't think I should have to. I didn't feel that it was the right thing for us to be enduring."

"He was the first, aside from my grandfather and Mr. Gus Vaughn, who was never actually afraid of white people, ... So many African Americans felt that you just had to be under Mr. Charlie's heel - that's what we called the white man, Mr. Charlie - and couldn't do anything to cross him. In other words, Parks believed in being a man and expected to be treated as a man."