We had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community.

I think a revolution can survive without single centralized leadership.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

Racial understanding is not something we find, but something that we must create. Through education, we seek to change attitudes.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-antirevolutionaries.

Right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to live like we are forced to live.