The Negro's great stumbling block in the drive toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.

The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.

When we do what's right, regardless of circumstances or consequences, we set the table for God to turn the tables. All we need to do is stand up, step in, or step out.

Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right.

We fixate on sins of commission: Don't do this, don't do that—and you're OK. But that is holiness by subtraction. And it's more hypocrisy than holiness! It's the sins of omission—what you would have, could have, and should have done — that break the heart of your heavenly Father.

Let us give practical recognition to the injustices of the past,by building a future based on equality&social justice

The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens.

Cruelty practiced as a matter of social principle or public policy, and presented to the community as a means to a higher goal is the most obscene and decadent phenomenon of any civilization.

I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom.

The age looks steadily to the redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and injustice; and a tireless and prying philanthropy, which is almost omniscient, is one of the most hopeful characteristics of the time.