I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom.

You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.

Some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

President Lyndon Johnson's high spirits were marked as he circulated among the many guests whom he had invited to witness an event he confidently felt to be historic, the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.... The bill that lay on the polished mahogany desk was born in violence in Selma, Alabama, where a stubborn sheriff... had stumbled against the future.

No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.

Everyone has an opportunity to be great because everyone has an opportunity to serve.