Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

We were not treated by our own government as proper human beings and consequently, some outsiders did not regard us as the same kind of humans as themselves.

What is our greatest enemy? Segregation.

This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further.

Whilst the Bihar calamity damages the body, the calamity brought about by untouchability corrodes the very soul.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit...

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.

What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as satanic, have not we been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren?

Discrimination is alive and soaring.

The structure of apartheid is still rooted in the Haitian society. When you have apartheid, you don't see those behind the walls. That is the reality of Haiti.

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

Like one of any minority, I have experienced prejudice.

The organizers and perpetuators of segregation are as much the enemy of America as any foreign invader.

The gay male is always going to be at the bottom.

People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same.

With all the other -isms that we deal with, that sort of nameless -ism that we have in too many of our hearts against the poor in this country is what wounds us most broadly.

Remember, this is a country where even the non-Jews know they have no rights.

I grieve, however, that anyone could be stupid enough, in any part of our country, to arrest the Vice-Presidential candidate of a recognized party because, on his way to speak to citizens of the United States, he tried to go through a door which was marked as the entrance for people of color. It seems to me completely incredible that, in a State where colored people are allowed to enlist and go to war and be killed for their country, there should exist anything so senseless as a rule which forces human beings to enter through separate doors according to their color. It is fundamentally un-Christian and wrong.

The trouble with discrimination is not discrimination per se, but rather that the people who are discriminated against think of themselves as second-class.

To attempt to explain a system like segregation to a 6 year child is a very difficult thing.

Even here in Boston, we are informed, pride and prejudice have got to such a pitch, that in the very houses erected to the Lord they have built little places for the reception of colored people, where they must sit during meeting, or keep away from the house of God. Hypocrisy could hardly go further than that of preachers who could not see the evils at their door but could send out missionaries to convert the heathen, notwithstanding.

Discrimination is not a national defense strategy!

Injustice is either very blatant - you walk down the street and someone calls you a name; you don't get a job because of your gender or your skin color or your sexual preference - but injustice is also very subliminal.

Although slavery may have been abolished, the crippling poison of racism still persists, and the struggle still continues.

You can't segregate and humiliate people decade after decade without creating long-lasting injuries.