“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”

All things come to him who waits – provided he knows what he is waiting for.

America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.

It’s harder for a leader to be born in a palace than to be born in a cabin.

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.

Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action.

We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act.

Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately defeats itself.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit.

Men grow by having responsibility laid upon them.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

Men are not put into this world to go the path of ease, they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle.

A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.

I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand

We grow by our dreams.

If you’ve made up your mind you can do something, you’re absolutely RIGHT.

To make it hard, to make it difficult almost impossible for people to cast a vote is not in keeping with the democratic process.

No one’s going to take our democracy away from us. Not now. Not ever.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.

Democracy is never a final achievement. It is a call to an untiring effort.

By the force of our demands, our determination, and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.