[People] don't see that there's a great deal of a difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political moral questions of our time.

Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.

In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.