Quotes about Change

Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.

In short, the Negroes' problem cannot be solved unless the whole of American society takes a new turn toward greater economic justice.

most people, and Christians in particular, are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society.

No revolution is executed like a ballet. Its steps and gestures are not neatly designed and precisely performed.

No problem is solved when we idly wait for God to undertake full responsibility.

To attempt radical reform without adequate organization is like trying to sail a boat without a rudder.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over...

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

Today's despair is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow's justice.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November

we will make progress if we freely admit that we have no magic.