Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others? Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.

Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace.

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness-justice.

I refuse to accept the view . . . that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed.

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.