In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental rights.
Desmond Tutu
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Stephen Biko
Being black is not a matter of pigmentation, being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
Steve Biko
The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today, it is fought out over his social recognition.
James Weldon Johnson
Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.
Coretta Scott King
It doesn’t matter how strong your opinions are. If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are indeed part of the problem.
Coretta Scott King
We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King
I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.
Martin Luther King
I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.
Martin Luther King
We may have come in different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
Martin Luther King
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
Martin Luther King
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
Martin Luther King
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Martin Luther King
But in the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that transform oppressors into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring miracles in the hearts of men.
Martin Luther King
The time is always right to do what is right.
Martin Luther King
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King
God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous and inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.
Martin Luther King
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
Martin Luther King
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King
I submit to you that if a person has not discovered something he or she will die for, then he or she isn’t fit to live.
Martin Luther King
Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
Martin Luther King
The ultimate measure of a person is not where he or she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he or she stands in times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King
The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy of brotherhood, the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of justice.
Martin Luther King
An individual has not started living until he or she can rise above the narrow confines of his or her individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Martin Luther King
When we look at modern human beings we have to face the fact that we suffer from a kind of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast with a scientific and technological abundance. We’ve learned to fly the air as birds, we’ve learned to swim the seas as fish, yet we haven’t learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.
Martin Luther King
Everyone has the power for greatness, not for fame but greatness, because greatness is determined by service.
Martin Luther King
Almost always the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
Martin Luther King
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
Martin Luther King
We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines, racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Martin Luther King
People who passively accept evil are much more involved in it as people who help perpetrate it. They who accept evil without protesting against it are really cooperating with it.
Martin Luther King
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Martin Luther King
Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela
None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots.
Thurgood Marshall
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi … has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
Thurgood Marshall
In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
Thurgood Marshall
We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
Thurgood Marshall
Justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other — that my liberty depends on you being free too.
Barack Obama
When people of color are killed in the inner city, when homeless people are killed, when the ‘nobodies’ are killed, district attorneys do not seek to avenge their deaths. Black, Hispanic or poor families who have a loved one murdered not only don’t expect the district attorney’s office to pursue the death penalty – which, of course, is both costly and time consuming – but are surprised when the case is prosecuted at all.
Helen Prejean
We must treat the disease of racism. This means we must understand the disease.
Sargent Shriver
Racism cannot be cured solely by attacking some of the results it produces, like discrimination in housing or in education.
Sargent Shriver
Christian values unite people. Racism separates them.
Sargent Shriver
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down the other is pulling up.
Booker T. Washington
No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America. There are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.
John F. Kennedy