He who is greatest among you shall be a servant. That's the new definition of greatness. ... By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.

It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.

But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.

To deny a man a job is to say that a man has no right to exist.

In every age and every generation, men have envisioned a promised land. Some may have envisioned it with the wrong ideology, with the wrong philosophical presupposition. But men in every generation thought in terms of some promised land.

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.