Quotes about Equality

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

But most whites in America in 1967, including many persons of goodwill, proceed from a premise that equality is a loose expression for improvement. White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap—essentially it seeks only to make it less painful and less obvious but in most respects to retain it. Most of the abrasions between Negroes and white liberals arise from this fact.

The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action...If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it

One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.

Unity has never meant uniformity.

I am tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody, injured and jumped on, along the Jericho Roads of life.

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That's the problem. "The Minister to the Valley," February 23, 1968

They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.

You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.