I've never credited myself with a professional life. But, basically, it has been that.

In order to see where we are going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been.

Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.

I have always thought that what is needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership in others.

Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.

Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

Give light, and people will find the way...

I didn't break the rules, but I challenged the rules.

My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.

One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

Have you never picked up a book you've read before, and found it speaks to you in a new way?

The people I'm stuck with in my life now aren't sucking the life out of me, they just suck.

It is purity of spirit that will keep corruption from the flesh

Losing your honor in a person's eye is tantamount losing it for entire humanity.

Activity in back of a very small idea will produce more than inactivity and the planning of a genius.

We need to have a strong economy that can create employment opportunities and that can also produce the revenue that we need to defend our country at home and abroad.

If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your own mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?

There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself.

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.

My delight and thy delight Walking, like two angels white, In the gardens of the night.