The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.

We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience... But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.

The surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.

A riot is the language of the unheard. On blacks in America; address at Birmingham AL

We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.

I'll tell you, I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roll. I felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on.