A woman can have a smile, and a woman can have a large backside, but I have been to the mountain and I am here to tell you that when a woman has both of those things she is not to be trusted.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

When the Negro finds the courage to be free, he faces dogs and guns and clubs and fire hoses totally unafraid, and the white men with those dogs, guns, clubs and fire hoses see that the Negro they have traditionally called "boy" has become a man.

Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.