“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.”

“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.”

“I'm concerned about a better world. I'm concerned about justice; I'm concerned about brotherhood; I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.”

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and think critically. Intelligence plus character; that is the goal of a true education.”

“A Mrs. Hipp said vehemently that I had insulted her by implying that she, along with other white members of the committee, had come to the meeting with a closed mind. I tried to make it clear that my statement applied only to those people whose public pronouncements were antiNegro, and not to the committee as a whole, but to no avail. They continued to look at me as though I were the cause of the stalemate.”

“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.”

“If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.”

“The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

“How often have the frustrations of second-class citizenship and humiliating status led us into blind outrage against each other and the real cause and course of our dilemma been ignored?”

“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice.”

“We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.”

“We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.”

“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.”