Quotes from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“essence of nonviolence was a refusal to retaliate against evil, a refusal based on the realization that “the law of retaliation is the law of the multiplication of evil.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“the Negro must come to the point of refusing to cooperate with evil,” but without ever hating the evildoers. “I have no malice toward anyone, not even the white policeman who almost broke my arm, who choked and kicked me. Let there be no malice among you.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“Mass action by everyday black people was just as powerful a tool for social change as the lawsuit, and maybe more so. If”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“The real goal, however, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority.… The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community” where all men would treat each other as brothers and equals. “There are great resources of goodwill in the southern white man that we must somehow tap,”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“We must understand,” Rustin wrote, “that our refusal to accept jim crow in specific areas challenges the entire social, political and economic order that has kept us second class citizens.… Those who oppose us, understand this.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“King spoke of how the Pilgrimage would be an appeal to the nation, and the Congress, to pass a civil rights bill that would give the Justice Department the power to file law suits against discriminatory registration and voting practices anywhere in the South.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“King’s primary responsibility, though, was to issue a call for action, and stress the need to expand the struggle on all fronts. Up to now we have thought of the color question as something which could be solved in and of itself. We know now that while it [is] necessary to say ‘No’ to racial injustice, this must be followed by a positive program of action: the struggle for the right to vote, for economic uplift of the people. A part of this is the realization that men are truly brothers, that the Negro cannot be free so long as there are poor and underprivileged white people.… Equality for Negroes is related to the greater problem of economic uplift for Negroes and poor white men. They share a common problem and have a common interest in working together for economic and social uplift. They can and must work together.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“What is new in your fight is the fact that it was initiated, fed, and sustained by students.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“King remarked, thinking back to Montgomery four years earlier. “If there is one lesson experience has taught us … it is that when you have found by the help of God a correct course, a morally sound objective, you do not equivocate, you do not retreat—you struggle to win a victory.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“Coretta told Daddy King of Kennedy’s phone call as they prepared to see Morris Abram. King, Sr., was ecstatic, and said that this was enough to shift his traditionally Republican presidential preference and vote instead for Kennedy, the man who had called his daughter-in-law.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“on November 1 he issued a statement that stopped just short of an endorsement. “I want to make it palpably clear,” King said, “that I am deeply grateful to Senator Kennedy for the genuine concern he expressed.… [He] exhibited moral courage of a high order.” In private, he added that the contrast between Kennedy’s call and Nixon’s inaction was very real to him. Even though Nixon had known him longer, he had done nothing. “I really considered him a moral coward,” King remarked.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“Several weeks later, President Eisenhower complained to reporters that Nixon had lost simply because of a “couple of phone calls.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“I think I received a new understanding of the meaning of suffering,” he wrote Harold DeWolf, “and I came away more convinced than ever before that unearned suffering is redemptive.” The imprisonment had not been pleasant, but he did feel that his faith had benefited from the experience.20”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“how valuable mass nonviolent resistance could be. The real goal, however, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority.… The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community” where all men would treat each other as brothers and equals. “There are great resources of goodwill in the southern white man that we must somehow tap,” King asserted, and we must work to “speed up the coming of the inevitable.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“The time had come, King said, to “move from protest to reconciliation.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“King told the student leaders not to forget that the struggle was justice versus injustice, not black versus white, and reminded them always to be open to compromise with local whites.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“first two days of Montgomery’s integrated bus service were without incident. Then, at 1:30 A.M. on Sunday morning, December 23, a shotgun blast ripped through the front door of King’s home. The floodlights were on, but no watchman was present. King, Coretta, and Yoki were asleep, and no one was injured. King chose not to call the police, but he did announce the incident to his Dexter congregation later that morning. “It may be that some of us may have to die,” he solemnly remarked. That evening, at a mass meeting, he declared that “I would like to tell whoever did it that it won’t do any good to kill me”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

“Tell Montgomery they can keep shooting and I’m going to stand up to them; tell Montgomery they can keep bombing and I’m going to stand up to them. If I had to die tomorrow morning I would die happy because I’ve been to the mountaintop and I’ve seen the promised land and it’s going to be here in Montgomery.”
― quote from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Popular quotes

“Valentine," I said, "are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Absolutely," he said. "If we put little wheels on our feet we could just roll around everywhere.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from MirrorMask

“Then we spoke the words together. "For all eternity, my life.”
― Laury Falter, quote from Reckoning

“So many synapses,' Drisana said. 'Ten trillion synapses in the cortex alone.'
Danlo made a fist and asked, 'What do the synapses look like?'
'They're modelled as points of light. Ten trillion points of light.' She didn't explain how neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapses, causing the individual neurons to fire. Danlo knew nothing of chemistry or electricity. Instead, she tried to give him some idea of how the heaume's computer stored and imprinted language. 'The computer remembers the synapse configuration of other brains, brains that hold a particular language. This memory is a simulation of that language. And then in your brain, Danlo, select synapses are excited directly and strengthened. The computer speeds up the synapses' natural evolution.'
Danlo tapped the bridge of his nose; his eyes were dark and intent upon a certain sequence of thought. 'The synapses are not allowed to grow naturally, yes?'
'Certainly not. Otherwise imprinting would be impossible.'
'And the synapse configuration – this is really the learning, the essence of another's mind, yes?'
'Yes, Danlo.'
'And not just the learning – isn't this so? You imply that anything in the mind of another could be imprinted in my mind?'
'Almost anything.'
'What about dreams? Could dreams be imprinted?'
'Certainly.'
'And nightmares?'
Drisana squeezed his hand and reassured him. 'No one would imprint a nightmare into another.'
'But it is possible, yes?'
Drisana nodded her head.
'And the emotions ... the fears or loneliness or rage?'
'Those things, too. Some imprimaturs – certainly they're the dregs of the City – some do such things.'
Danlo let his breath out slowly. 'Then how can I know what is real and what is unreal? Is it possible to imprint false memories? Things or events that never happened? Insanity? Could I remember ice as hot or see red as blue? If someone else looked at the world through shaida eyes, would I be infected with this way of seeing things?'
Drisana wrung her hands together, sighed, and looked helplessly at Old Father.
'Oh ho, the boy is difficult, and his questions cut like a sarsara!' Old Father stood up and painfully limped over to Danlo. Both his eyes were open, and he spoke clearly. 'All ideas are infectious, Danlo. Most things learned early in life, we do not choose to learn. Ah, and much that comes later. So, it's so: the two wisdoms. The first wisdom: as best we can, we must choose what to put into our brains. And the second wisdom: the healthy brain creates its own ecology; the vital thoughts and ideas eventually drive out the stupid, the malignant and the parasitical.”
― David Zindell, quote from The Broken God

“He believes that a real work of art can be owned but should not be subject to capture; that it should radiate such authority, such bizarre but confident beauty (or unbeauty) that it can't be undone by even the most ludicrous sofas or side tables. A real work of art should rule the room, and the clients should call up not to complain about the art but to say that the art has helped them understand how the room is all a horrible mistake, can Peter suggest a designer to help them start over again.”
― Michael Cunningham, quote from By Nightfall

“That is the gift of taking the long road: you know you're not missing anything.”
― Melissa Febos, quote from Whip Smart: A Memoir

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