The main part of the tree is the root, and the root is always beneath the ground. It never is brought out into the light.

Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds. I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth.

What does a black man look like begging for a cup of coffee in a white restaurant, and doesn't have a job to back up his - to pay for it when, when - when he does get the coffee? It's putting the cart before the horse.

... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.

What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

It's liberty or it's death. It's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.