“It doesn’t matter how strong your opinions are. If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are, indeed, part of the problem.”

I’m more determined than ever that my husband’s dream will become a reality.

I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice.

When aroused the American conscience is a powerful force for reform.

Justice is never advanced in the taking of human life.

If you give your life to a cause in which you believe, and if it is right and just, and if your life comes to an end as a result of this, then your life could not have been spent in a more redemptive way. I think that is what my husband has done.

I’m fulfilled in what I do. I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes – the finer things of life – would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.

If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.

If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, then American democracy is in trouble.

Violence diminishes our humanity.

A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.

Because Dr. King was human and not divine – although we think he was divine, he was just a man, an extraordinary man, but a man – and he would get depressed from time to time and disappointed about all kinds of things relative to the movement.

It’s going to take an act of Congress to deal with poverty and hunger, not only in this country, but throughout the world. We have the resources but we don’t have the will.

As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn’t as good as a white child.

Behind every good man, there’s a good woman reminding you I knew you when you didn’t have nothing.

Nonviolence first changes the individual.

We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community.

I been the same dude my whole life.

People are starting to go on about my weight but I’m not going to change my size because they don’t like the way I look.

The only thing that changed about you is me.

No matter how long we’re here. Life is constant and complicated at times. I’ve changed drastically in the last couple of years and I’m still changing and that’s okay.

Awareness is the greatest agent for change.

I am so grateful to be a woman, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Be ready to change your goals, but never change your values.

Most the time, when it rains it starts pouring, but how we grind it makes the weather change for us.