The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

I am not afraid of the word tension.

For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.

Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.