Jim Crow is alive and it's dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, my friend, instead of a white robe.

I'm not going to ask for anything unless the workers want it. If they want it, they'll ask for it.

It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of high maturity, to rise to the level of self-criticism.

The supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.

A Church that has lost its voice for justice is a Church that has lost its relevance in the world.

Ten cures for depression are to go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times.

Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.

I hate it when people quote me on the internet, claiming I said things that I never actually said.

Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world.

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.

Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well with others.

Talk is cheap...It is the way we organize and use our lives everyday that tells what we believe in.

Non-violence has suffered its biggest defeat in the hands of people who most want to talk about it.

Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.

Money, like any other force such as electricity, is amoral and can be used for either good or evil.

This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.

To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish.

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

We can dream of an America, and a world, in which love and not money are civilization's bottom line.

The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.

I decide on the basis of conscience. A genuine leader doesn't reflect consensus, he molds consensus.

Never could I advocate nonviolence in this country and not advocate nonviolence for the whole world.

Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?"

There's no turning back...We will win. We are winning because ours is a revolution of mind and heart.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

If we are going to achieve a real equality, the U.S. will have to adopt a modified form of Socialism.

Vanity asks, is it popular? Politics ask, will it work? But conscience and morality ask, is it right?

Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality.

For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve.

I may not get there with you, but I believe that we as a people will someday reach the promised land.

The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind.

The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.

I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle.

By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality.

We must understand that the highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline.

As long as we have a poor country bordering California, it's going to be very difficult to win strikes.

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.

The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.

We must have our freedom now. We must have the right to vote. We must have equal protection of the law.

The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning.

We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.

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