If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.

You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt.

The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.

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

[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.