Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.

To deny a man a job is to say that a man has no right to exist.

And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality.

I think that we've got to come to see this. The Negro is an American.

The question is no longer between violence and non-violence it is between non-violence and non-existence.

This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.

We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."