“The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.”

Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves – and be free.

I’m not going to ask for anything unless the workers want it. If they want it, they’ll ask for it.

Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures and in the environment.

If you’re not frightened that you might fail, you’ll never do the job. If you’re frightened, you’ll work like crazy.

What is at stake is human dignity. If a man is not accorded respect he cannot respect himself and if he does not respect himself, he cannot demand it.

The only ones who make things change are fanatics. If you’re not a fanatic around here, you can’t cut it.

We are suffering. We have suffered. And we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

Dr. King challenged us to work for a greater humanity. I only hope that we are worthy of his challenge.

From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.

When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of men we are.

Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity?

I’ve always maintained that it isn’t the form that’s going to make the difference. It isn’t the rule or the procedure or the ideology, but it’s human beings that will make it.

If you give yourself totally to the nonviolence struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone.

It’s amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease.

There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.

Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.

It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.

I’m armed with more than complete steel, – The justice of my quarrel.

You don’t realize what fine fighting material there is in age. You show me any one who’s lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter – someone who’s got the will to live.

I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.

But facts are chiels that winna ding, An’ downa be disputed.

Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.

Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages.’ There really was no other way to describe what we encountered there.