The only ones who make things change are fanatics. If you're not a fanatic around here, you can't cut it.

Imagine the National Guard being called against a group of peaceful people. How far can we get; how disgraceful can it become? It's the most disgraceful, the most wicked thing I've seen in all my years of organizing farm labor.

Violence just hurts those who are already hurt...Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.

We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hungers on us, and now we hunger for justice.

Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak... Non-violence is hard work.

When a man or woman, young, or old, takes a place on the picket line for even a day or two, he will never be the same again.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.