“It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.”

“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“There is no noise as powerful as the sound of the marching feet of a determined people.”

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree”

“We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. So however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne."   Yet that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right.  "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children all over this nation - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, "Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last.”

“Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.” 

“We have, it seems, shut the poor out of our minds and driven them from the mainstream of our society. We have allowed the poor to become invisible, and we have become angry when they make their presence felt. But just as nonviolence has exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, we must now find ways to expose and heal the sickness of poverty—not just its symptoms, but its basic causes.”

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.”

“There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”

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

“Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”

“At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love”

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ”

“our slogan must not be “Burn, baby, burn.” It must be, “Build, baby, build.” “Organize, baby, organize.” Yes, our slogan must be “Learn, baby, learn,” so that we can earn, baby, earn.”

“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”