“Men cannot win freedom unless they win equality. They cannot win equality unless they win freedom.”

I have an inner satisfaction of having done what I thought was right at the time which I thought was propitious.

Justice is never given; it is exacted.

We seek the right to play our part in advancing the cause of national defense and national unity. But certainly, there can be no true national unity where one-tenth of the population is denied their basic rights as American citizens.

Lincoln was the spokesman of the rising capitalist class of the North, who viewed the emancipation of Negro slaves as indispensable to the development and triumph of the manufacturers and bankers of the industrial North, East and West over the slave-holder of the South.

I personally pledge myself to openly counsel, aid, and abet youth, both black and white, to quarantine any Jim Crow conscription system.

The Negro was a political football between his former slave master and Northern political adventurers.

If someone tried to deprive you of your rights, you’ve got to resist it. You’ve got to resent it. You’ve got to fight against it.

Since almost all Negroes are workers, live on wages, and suffer from the high cost of food, clothing and shelter, it is obvious that the Republican and Democratic Parties are opposed to their interests.

Freedom is never given; it is won.

I am prepared to oppose a Jim Crow army till I rot in jail.

I don’t ever remember a single day of hopelessness. I knew from the history of the labor movement, especially of the black people, that it was an undertaking of great trial. That, live or die, I had to stick with it, and we had to win.

I suggest that ten thousand Negroes march on Washington, D.C., the capital of the Nation, with the slogan, ‘We loyal Negro American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country.’

Loyalty is meaningless; it depends on what one is loyal to.

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

Negroes are in no mood to shoulder guns for democracy abroad while they are denied democracy here at home.

Freedom is never granted; it is won.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

I always told myself I am never going to set foot there unless I am playing and a participant.

There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

No man can use his Bible with power unless he has the character of Jesus in his heart.

Let us learn this lesson from Nehemiah: you never lighten the load unless first you have felt the pressure in your own soul.

Period recreation is very difficult unless you make a black and white movie.