“God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven time and time again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.”

“Hate is too big of burden to bear. I have decided to love.”

“it is just as wrong, or even perhaps more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

“Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.”

“The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

“Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.”

“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“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 and that is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”

“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well‐adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities. But I say to you, my friends, as I move to my conclusion, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good‐will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence… In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment‐‐men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos. Who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

“After the opposition had failed to negotiate us into a compromise, it turned to subtler means for blocking the protest; namely, to conquer by dividing. False rumors were spread concerning the leaders of the movement. Negro workers were told by their white employers that their leaders were only concerned with making money out of the movement. Others were told that the Negro leaders rode big cars while they walked. During this period the rumor was spread that I had purchased a brand new Cadillac for myself and a Buick station wagon for my wife. Of course none of this was true.”