All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.

Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?

The old Catholic parties hounded me with a Christian hatred from station to station, city to city, one stage to another.

Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.

I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.