The Great Debaters Quotes
2007 films|Great Debaters, Drama films|Great Debaters, Historical films|Great Debaters, 2000s American films|Great Debaters, Films about educators, Films set in the 1930s
Top Quotes
“Kimberly Elise - Pearl Farmer”
“We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.”
“Nate Parker - Henry Lowe”
“Gina Ravera - Ruth Tolson”
“John Heard - Sheriff Dozier”
“Wikipedia: The Great Debaters”
“Jurnee Smollett - Samantha Booke”
“Rotten Tomatoes: The Great Debaters”
“Jermaine Williams - Hamilton Burgess”
“Forest Whitaker - Dr. James L. Farmer Sr.”
“Internet Movie Database (IMDb): The Great Debaters”
“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?”
“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!”
“In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, "Why?" My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. 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.”