LILLIAN SMITH

Tell them, please, that I am deeply humbled by the goodwill, the self discipline, the courage, the wisdom of this group of Montgomery Negroes.

Segregation is evil; there is no pattern of life which can dehumanize men as can the way of segregation.

What everyone has always wanted in this country, what most came here for, was to get away from all those others who smell bad, are sleeping in a shanty, and are eating fatback and are going to loaf tomorrow because there is no job to go to.

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.

Even its children know that the South is in trouble.

Belief in Some One's right to punish you is the fate of all children in Judaic-Christian culture. But nowhere else, perhaps, have the rich seed-beds of Western homes found such a growing climate for guilt as is produced in the South by the combination of a warm moist evangelism and racial segregation.

Man, born of woman, has found it a hard thing to forgive her for giving him birth. The patriarchal protest against the ancient matriarch has borne strange fruit through the years.

… we clung to the belief... that our white skin made us "better" than all other people. And this belief comforted us, for we felt worthless and weak when confronted with authorities who had cheapened nearly all we held dear, except our skin color. There, in the land of Epidermis, every one of us was a little king.

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.

It worked for a long time. Each "stood" by the other. When the poor white lynched a Negro, the rich white protected him in court; the preacher protected him in church; the policeman looked away, the sheriff was easily intimidated, the juries rarely convicted, and the newspapers were "reasonable.

The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

We need not feel ashamed of flirting with the zodiac. The zodiac is well worth flirting with.

Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.

Rich folks always talk hard times.

Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.

When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.

Man, born of woman, has found it a hard thing to forgive her for giving him birth. The patriarchal protest against the ancient matriarch has borne strange fruit through the years.

Tell them, please, that I am deeply humbled by the goodwill, the self discipline, the courage, the wisdom of this group of Montgomery Negroes.

It worked for a long time. Each "stood" by the other. When the poor white lynched a Negro, the rich white protected him in court; the preacher protected him in church; the policeman looked away, the sheriff was easily intimidated, the juries rarely convicted, and the newspapers were "reasonable.

The politicians... needed the rural people and used them as ruthlessly as Negroes were used when they were needed. They needed to play voter against voter and all of them against "the Negro" -- and they needed the poor whites' approval of acts which the dominant group's more informed minds could not wholly approve. They needed poor whites to be their yes-men, moral henchmen quieting their leaders' uneasy consciences.

… we clung to the belief... that our white skin made us "better" than all other people. And this belief comforted us, for we felt worthless and weak when confronted with authorities who had cheapened nearly all we held dear, except our skin color. There, in the land of Epidermis, every one of us was a little king.

We in America – and men across the earth – have trapped ourselves with that word equality, which is inapplicable to the genus man. I wish we would forget it. Stop its use in our country: Let the communists have it. It isn’t fit for men who fling their dreams across the skies. It is fit only for a leveling down of mankind.

Segregation is evil; there is no pattern of life which can dehumanize men as can the way of segregation.

Even its children know that the South is in trouble.

What everyone has always wanted in this country, what most came here for, was to get away from all those others who smell bad, are sleeping in a shanty, and are eating fatback and are going to loaf tomorrow because there is no job to go to.

For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into the masses. And where is the David who can slay this giant?

I broke every barrier I could to see things as they are.

The question in crisis or ordeal is not: Are you going to be an extremist? The question is: What kind of extremist are you going to be?

None but the weak crave to be better than. Strong men are satisfied with their own strength.

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.

To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down one's power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what man's journey is about, I think.

Belief in Some One's right to punish you is the fate of all children in Judaic-Christian culture. But nowhere else, perhaps, have the rich seed-beds of Western homes found such a growing climate for guilt as is produced in the South by the combination of a warm moist evangelism and racial segregation.