“Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.”

“If it doesn't seem unpleasant, then it's not discipline. If it doesn't seem painful, then it's not discipline.”

“Where the fruit of the gospel is made the gospel, the power of the gospel to produce its fruit dies.”

“Cheap intimacy feels real for the moment, but you get what you pay for.”

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.”

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”

“While the great prize in marriage is Christ-centered intimacy, the great prize in dating is Christ-centered clarity.”

“The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

“Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.”

“Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”

“we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”

“All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.”

“An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”;”

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

“Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism.”

“Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened, with all its ugliness, to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

“So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.”

“the United States has by far the highest rates of incarceration in the Western world; it witnesses more gun violence than any other so-called civilized country; its entertainment industry glorifies violence, misogyny, sexual promiscuity, and infantile self-indulgence; it offers less medical and family support for the poor than any other Western nation; it maintains inequalities of wealth on a par with the kleptocracies of the Third World; its rate of infant mortality is several times higher than most western countries; and, most grievously, the nation is witnessing a disastrous collapse of the two-parent family as the accepted norm for giving birth and raising children. The US racial history is not solely responsible for these indices of social pathology but that history has contributed substantially to every one of them.”

“most of us believers need to confess that at least some of the time and in some of our actions, we actively or passively nurture some of the underlying prejudice, paternalism, or attitudes that remain from our country’s racist past.”