Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it.

"I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world."

An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.

Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

We can't slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored.

The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.