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

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.

Lincoln merely nominally freed the bodies of Negroes. But Debs would free the bodies and minds of Negroes.

Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within.

Patriotism has no appeal to us; justice has. Party has no weight with us; principle has.

Negroes must be free in order to be equal, and they must be equal in order to be free.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.

We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions…

If we have white persons in the March, we are certain to have trouble with the Communists, and it may not be viewed as a true expression of the Negro’s protest.

In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.

Time by itself means nothing, no matter how fast it moves, unless we give it something to carry for us; something we value. Because it is such a precious vehicle, is time.

Unless you sit down and talk to your dad and say, ‘Why weren’t you there?’ and he says, ‘I’m going to really tell you the truth,’ then you won’t know.

He’s the president. I’m the general. Unless I want to get impeached, I got to do what he says.

I don’t have any feeling of accomplishment about anything unless there’s a lot of risk to it.

I can’t expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

I don’t believe that there’s a good guy and a bad guy. Unless it’s like Superman or Batman, there is no good guy and bad guy.

The combination of pictures and words together can be really effective, and I began to realise in my career that unless I wrote my own words, then my message was diluted

Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.