Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.

O America, how you've taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.

Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.

There is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth