"To our bitterest opponents we say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we shall still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.'" Strength to Love
	"I can see nothing more basic in the life of an individual that to have a job or an income. I can never forget that our nation signed a huge promissory note back in 1776—'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" "Why We Must Go To Washington, DC" January 15, 1968
	"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Letter from Birmingham City Jail, April 16, 1963 "I guess it is easy to those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people' when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, 'Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?'; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day-in and day-out by nagging signs reading 'white' men and 'colored'; when your first name becomes 'nigger' and your middle name becomes 'boy' (however old you are) and your last name becomes 'John' and your wife and mother are never given the respected title 'Mrs.'; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and out resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." Letter from Birmingham City Jail, April 16, 1963
	"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the alters of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land. 'And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine an fig tree and none shall be afraid.' I still believe that we shall overcome." Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway December 10, 1964
	"I can see nothing more basic in the life of an individual that to have a job or an income. I can never forget that our nation signed a huge promissory note back in 1776—'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" "Why We Must Go To Washington, DC" January 15, 1968
	"…I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to day that I tried to love and serve humanity… And that is all I want to say. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody up with a song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, them my living will not be in vain. If I can do my duty as Christian ought. If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought. If I can spread the messages asx the Master taught. Then my living will not be in vain." "Then My Living Will Not Be in Vain," Ebeneezer Baptist Church, February 1968
	"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." "Beyond Vietnam" speech, April 4, 1967
	America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain…our fate is to become one, yet many." Ralph Waldo Ellison, author, The Invisible Man
	"Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life." William Edward Burghardt DuBois, historian and social scientist
	"The potential in this country is so great that it makes me tremble and weep to see it go awry." Maya Angelou, poet, author
	" 'We, the people.' It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that 'We, the people.' I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people'" Barbara Jordan, attorney and stateswoman
	"I started with this idea in my head. There's two things I've got a right to…death or liberty." Harriet Ross Tubman, escaped slave and abolitionist