Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured.

The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.

I know that God is not going to willfully hurt us. Why there is suffering is the business of the Lord, but He never seems to give us more than we can bear.

Be an artist at whatever you do. Even if you are a street sweeper, be the Michelangelo of street sweepers.

I think that we must face the fact that in reality, you cannot have economic and political equality without having some form of social equality. I think this is inevitable.

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.