"He showed me the lowest. I had to surmise the highest."
"Eventually, some black thinkers believe, this "separation" may be the shortest route to an authentic communication at some future date when blacks and whites can enter into encounters in which they truly speak as equals and in which the white man will no longer load every phrase with unconscious suggestions that he has something to "concede" to black men or that he wants to help black men "overcome" their blackness."
"Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself?"
"How can you render the duties of justice to men when you're afraid they'll be so unaware of justice they may destroy you? ...especially since their attitude toward their own race is a destructive one."
"If virtue does not equal powers, powers will be misused."
"It was a little thing, but on top of the other little things, it broke something in me."
"We, who were reduced to eating on the sidewalk , were suddenly elevated in status by this man's misery. We were the aristocrats and he the beggar. It flattered us. We were superbly above him and the comedy gave us a delusion of high self-respect. In a while, the magnanimity of the rich would complete the picture. We would feed our scraps to the poor."
"...[A] lot of them, without even understanding the cause, just give up. They take what they can-mostly in pleasure,and they make the grand gesture, the wild gesture, because what have they got to lose if they do die in a car wreck or a knife fight or something else equally stupid."
"Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty"
"In the context of today, this WAS heroism."
"A law is not good merely because the legislature wills it, but the legislature has the mortal duty to will only that which is good."
"We fill too many gutters while we argue unimportant points and confuse issues."
"We need a conversion of morals," the elderly man said. "Not just superficially, but profoundly. And in both races. We need a great saint-some enlightened common sense. Otherwise, we'll never have the right answers..."
"I learned a strange thing... that in a jumble of unintelligible talk, the word "nigger" leaps out with electric clarity. You always hear it and it always stings. And always it casts the person using it into a category of brute ignorance. I thought with some amusement that if these two women only knew what they were revealing about themselves to every Negro on that bus, they would have been outraged."
"I'm annoyed by those who love mankind but are discourteous to people."
"A love for his child was so profound, it spilled over to all humanity."
"All the courtesies in the world do not cover up the one vital and massive discourtesy."
"If the judgement makes the law and not the law directs the judgement, it is impossible there should be such a thing as an illegal judgement given."
"DESEGREGATE THE BUSES WITH THIS 7 POINT PROGRAM:1. Pray for guidance.2. Be courteous and friendly.3. Be neat and clean.4. Avoid loud talk.5. Do not argue.6. Report incidents immediately.7. Overcome evil with good.Sponsored by Interdenominational Ministerial AllianceRev. A. L. Davis, Pres.Rev. J. E. Poindexter, Secretary"
"The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls and bodies of other men (and in the process destroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested."