Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.

What I'm saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis.

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. [...] Every now and then I ask myself, 'What is it that I would want said?' I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

[People] don't see that there's a great deal of a difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance.

When Negroes looked for the second phase, the realization of equality, they found that many of their white allies had quietly disappeared.... To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.