We must substitute courage for caution.

Even if they try to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that there are some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for. And if a person has not found something to die for, that person isn't fit to live!

I think there can be a collective leadership. Maybe some symbolize the struggle [for human's rights] a little more than others, but I think it's absolutely necessary for the leadership to be united in order to make the revolution effective.

Why is the church always a taillight rather than a headlight?

This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.

Nothing degrades a man do more than the allowed stoop so low as to hate someone