You cannot always control the powers-that-be. You just have to have faith and stand by the things you believe in.

I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back. My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a stereotype. I paid the same fare as others, and I felt violated. I was not going back.

What really matters is not whether we have problems, but how we go through them. We must keep going on to make it through whatever we are facing.

I will always work for human rights for all people.

I have spent over half my life teaching love and brotherhood, and I feel that it is better to continue to try to teach or live equality and love than it would be to have hatred or prejudice. Everyone living together in peace and harmony and love - that’s the goal that we seek, and I think that the more people there are who reach that state of mind, the better we will all be.

I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be.

Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way.