Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

…In certain parts of Latin America, the seizure of the vast majority of the wealth by an oligarchy of owners bereft of social consciousness, the practical absence or the shortcomings of a rule of law, military dictators making a mockery of elementary human rights, the corruption of certain powerful officials, the savage practices of some foreign capital interests constitute factors which nourish a passion for revolt among those who thus consider themselves the powerless victims of a new colonialism in the technological, financial, monetary, or economic order.

Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals.

Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Property in man, always morally unjust, has become nationally dangerous.

The slaves had food stamps, too. It was called 'scraps from Massa's table.'

Race is not particularly interesting to me. Power is. Who has power and who doesn't. Slavery interests me because it's an incredible violation that has not stopped. It's necessary to talk about that. Race is a diversion.

Kissinger's orchestration of political and military and diplomatic cover for apartheid in South Africa presents us with a morally repulsive record and includes the appalling consequences of the destabilization of Angola

To me, Central America is one large plantation; and I see the people's struggle to be free as a slave revolt.

Slavery was our original sin. Race, our continuing dilemma.

The enslavement of Africans [in America] built the world's strongest economy.

What European nation which has undertaken the heavy responsibility of introducing the blessings and vices of civilization into the Dark Continent can claim immunity for its representatives

Is Justice to be established by subjecting half of mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, Sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men whether white or black…. An opportunity is now presented, if not to diminish, at least to prevent the growth of a sin that sits heavy on the soul of every one of us.

I myself am a descendant of the European tribes, now called nations, that have established political, military, and economic dominance over the world. I confess to my sin of privilege and my reluctance to forego the perks my race and class afford me.

The state should look into this, as other nations do: see to it that nobles do not take the lives of their subjects at will, or burden them with unjust toil - as if they were dumb cattle!

Fifteen Negroes in whose hands we had put weapons, performed prodigies of valor. If the blacks did not cost so much, and if their labors were not so necessary to the colony, it would be better to turn them into soldiers, and to dismiss those we have, who are so bad and so cowardly that they seem to have been manufactured purposely for this colony

Like Nemesis of Greek tragedy, the central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those four million souls whom the nation had used and degraded, and on whom the South had built an oligarchy similar to the colonial imperialism of today, erected on cheap colored labor and raising raw material for manufacture.

During past years, like frightened children, we were afraid to eat the strong meat of human rights and instead sucked the milk of civil rights from the breasts of white liberals, black Uncle Toms, and Aunt Jemimas.

We know that enlightened capital didn't get rid of the slave trade.

There are a lot of leaders that talk about ending things like oppression - whether it's discrimination or getting a job - but the reason for all of this stuff is somebody's making a profit off our backs. That's the reason why black people were brought here in the first place. It was a profit motive.

We live in a country that has profited for hundreds of years off the labor of individuals without having to pay for it.

Black folks are judged by quantity, not quality. It's a decimal point or figure. How different is that from slavery? There's no moral code, it's just about successful business for America.

This country was founded by a group of slave owners who told us that all men are created equal.

An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor.

How can a Negro say America is his nation? He was brought here in chains; he was put in slavery an worked like a mule for three hundred years; he was separated from his land, his culture, his God, his language!