“I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.

Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.

When the heart is right, the mind and the body will follow.

If a man had nothing that was worth dying for, then he was not fit to live.

Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.

Lesbian and gay people are a permanent part of the American workforce, who currently have no protection from the arbitrary abuse of their rights on the job.

Nonviolence is a method that transforms, first of all, the individual once you understand it and embrace it. It begins with you and, if you can, about transforming individuals so that they love unconditionally.

Money is necessary — both to support a family and to advance causes one believes in.

I always knew that I was called to do something. I didn’t know what, but I finally rationalized after I met Martin [Luther King, Jr.] and it took a lot of praying to discover this, that this was probably what God had called me to do, to marry him.

Hate is too great a burden to bear.

When Good Friday comes, these are the moments in life when we feel there’s no hope. But then, Easter comes.

Women, in general, are not part of the corruption of the past, so they can give a new kind of leadership, a new image for mankind.

If Martin [Luther King, Jr.]’s philosophy had been embraced and lived out in Iraq and other places, we wouldn’t have bin Ladens.

Mama and Daddy King represent the best in manhood and womanhood, the best in a marriage, the kind of people we are trying to become.

Without Coretta Scott King, there would not have been a Martin Luther King, Jr. in the way that we know him.

All we seek is an America where every person is given the chance to productively contribute to his country and where he can receive a fair and equitable share of the wealth that production creates.

The last thing my dad said to me before he passed away was, ‘I know you’re gonna be OK. I’m not worried about you’.

Only you and you alone can change your situation. Don’t blame it on anything or anyone.

I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution.

Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.

I’m not going to doubt my life.