You can always chase a dream but it will not count if you never catch it.
Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you’ve been knocked down, to push forward – ever forward – to forgive. It means sacrificing everything if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence. It means living.
If not now then when, if not me then who?
Reform is for people who have government connections, revolution is for the people!
America’s greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.
History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.
So over you is the greatest enemy a man can have and that is fear. I know some of you are afraid to listen to the truth-you have been raised on fear and lies. But I am going to preach to you the truth until you are free of that fear...
I, for one, will join in with anyone – I don’t care what color you are – as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.
Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.
Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
My father didn’t know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master.
The mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world.
The mental flexibility of the wise man permits him to keep an open mind and enables him to readjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for a change.
It’s liberty or death! It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody!
I don’t advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I’ll step on his...
What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. You don’t need anything else.
A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not in reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.