Coretta Scott King Quotes

While there's capitalism, there'll be socialism, because there is always a response to injustice.

When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the desire for action and the desire for revolution.

I am not the least bit surprised that injustice persists. I'm also not surprised that resistance to injustice persists.

There is a weapon we can fight with. That is the weapon of political action.

Poverty is not inevitable. It is a human ill that we can fight if we decide to do so together.

Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

Unless the poor of the world agitate for themselves to be heard, there will be no changes in their circumstances.

For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes In the class war, despairing When there was only injustice and no resistance

Only force would produce social change.

Political evils must be sorely felt before they can be removed.

Rebellion is the necessary result of injustice. It may not always achieve its purpose, or be intended to do so, but a conviction of injustice endured must precede articulate rebellion. Nor is it always certain that injustice will be followed by rebellion – it would be very much better for the world if this was the case. But where the victims of aggression or custom are ignorant and disunited, the opportunities for reasoned and effective revolt are practically reduced to nothing…

I'll continue fighting as long as these social injustices exist.

It was not until I got down to Latin America that I began to get a political education. Whatever my ideas when I went down there, I saw things around me every day that influenced me. I saw the terrible economic and social conditions, and the injustices that could not be ignored.

It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.

If you are going to organize and ask for commitment, you cannot go to the most desperately poor. They are not likely to take action. If you stand on a man's head and push it into the dirt, he may not even see the heel of your boot. But if his whole face is already above ground, he can see your heel and he can see freedom ahead.

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.

I'm not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you.

The disparity between the haves and have-nots was always blatantly obvious to me, and it's that exact gap that drove me to start writing and pick up a pen. I wanted to explain and understand the world around me because it was easy to see it was corrupted.

Chicago, I feel, is a microcosm for the segregated, violent environment that is America. I try to not only speak about these things in music, but also try to address these things in real life tangibly with action.

Regardless of how much media coverage will be received, talking and raising awareness about social injustice isn't enough.

As I grew older and got into the late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be a voice of the people. You know, getting locked up all the time and going through so much oppression and seeing it all around myself, I wanted to be a voice for it.