When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

What you get with violence can be maintained only with violence

The hope of the world is still in dedicated minorities. The trail-blazers in human, scientific and religious freedom have always been in a minority.

As a teenager I had never been able to accept the fact of having to go to the back of a bus or sit in the segregated section of a train. The first time I had been seated behind a curtain in a dining car, I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood.

I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

It's not the violence of the few that scares me, it's the silence of the many