For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation - and yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.

The truth may hurt, but love helps ease the pain.

Racial understanding is not something we find, but something that we must create. Through education, we seek to change attitudes.

So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind - it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact - I can only submit to the edict of others.

If you haven't found something worth dying for, you're not fit to live.