It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after extreme grief that the greatest joy can come.

Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you - how do you think I feel to have to tell you, 'We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its hum an rights - and you've got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.' What did we do, who preceded you ? I'll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don't you make the same mistake we made.

Can you accuse me, if a man is putting a rope around my neck, of being violent, when I violently struggle against this lyncher to try and keep him from putting a rope around my innocent neck? Why, you'd be insane to cause me - to call me violent.

Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.

At the same time Reverend Galamison policy is intelligent enough where he can't be used to attack me.

I am not an American; I am one of twenty-two million black people who are victims of Americanism.

I'm not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it.