The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

I have an ultimate faith in America and an audacious faith in mankind.

Violence is anything that denies human integrity, and leads to hopelessness and helplessness.

To have peace in the world, men & nations must embrace the nonviolent assertion that ends and means must cohere.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.

It was argued that the Negro was inferior by nature because of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham.... The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro.