Protest, Resistance and Revolution

If any question why we died,

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

The Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor 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.

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

The majority never has right on its side.

The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

O imitatores, servum pecus.

Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

Dort, wo man Bücher

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.

The compact which exists between the North and the South is ‘a covenant with death and an agreement with hell’.

I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!

Hell, I never vote for anybody. I always vote against.

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.

Every tone [of the songs of the slaves] was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.

France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war!

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.

Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.