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.

Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

All men are interdependent. Every nation is an heir of a vast treasury of ideas and labor to which both the living and the dead of all nations have contributed. Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives eternally 'in the red.' We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter. From Strength to Love, 1963