There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.

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.

The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.

Nonviolence is the most potent technique for oppressed people. Unearned suffering is redemptive.

Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom.

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

The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.