Any racial reconciliation we've had in this country has come not out of confrontation but out of a spirit of reconciliation. If we continue to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we'll eventually end up with a land of people who are blind and toothless.

Moral power is probably best when it is not used. The less you use it the more you have.

I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.

The unsung heroes of the civil rights movement were always the wives and the mothers.

If all I get is a little controversy for speaking the truth, if I did less, I would not be worth living.

Having personally watched the Voting Rights Act being signed into law that August day, I can't begin to imagine how we could have all been so wrong in believing that more Americans would vote once they were all truly free to do so.

There is a happy land, Far, far away, Where Saints in glory stand, Bright, bright as day.