Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.

We must condemn those who are perpetuating the violence, and not the individuals who engage in the pursuit of their constitutional rights.

I always contended that we as a race must not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, but to create a moral balance in society where democracy and brotherhood would be reality for all men.

One aspect of the civil rights struggle that receives little attention is the contribution it makes to the whole society. The Negro winning in rights for himself produces substantial benefits for the nation.

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

If Western civilization does not now respond constructively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.

Jesus never says to the poor: 'come find the church', but he says to those of us in the church: 'go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.

In Psalm 72, Solomon prays for power and fame but he says the purpose of influence is to speak up for others and one is the immigrant. He doesn't delineate between legal and illegal.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth

The most general formulation of rights given with the natural is, in the words of Roman law, suum cuique, to each his own.

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