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Quotes about Equality

the words of President Kennedy, uttered on June 11, 1963, only a few months before his tragic death: "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities . . . Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Even where the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. There must be a concerted effort on the part of Negro leaders to arouse their people from their apathetic indifference to this obligation of citizenship. In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In short, the Negroes' problem cannot be solved unless the whole of American society takes a new turn toward greater economic justice.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was the Sermon on the Mount, rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that initially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love. As
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishing of a segregated society. They segregated Southern money from the poor whites; they segregated Southern churches from Christianity; they segregated Southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Deep in our history of struggle for freedom, Canada was the North star
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Samuel G. Morton, a Philadelphia physician, emerged with the head-size theory which affirmed that the larger the skull, the superior the individual. This theory was used by other ethnologists to prove that the large head size of Caucasians signified more intellectual capacity and more native worth. A
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
I will do everything in my power to make it so by outspoken agreement whenever proper, and determined opposition whenever necessary.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
There will be no permanent solution to the race problem until oppressed men develop the capacity to love their enemies. The darkness of racial injustice will be dispelled only by the light of forgiving love.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.