“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.”

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.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens.

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.

The world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence.

Honestly, I’m not going to lie. I was a good kid.

My dream is like a child and I’m taking all the custody.

There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

I was a funky kid.