Shame on the cant and hypocrisy of those who can teach virtue, preach righteousness, and pray blessings for those only with skins colored like their own.

While some [Quakers] preached the golden rule, others practiced segregation within their own churches; some even carried it to the church pew and the graveyard.

A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled minds.

In the end, as any successful teacher will tell you, you can only teach the things that you are. If we practice racism then it is racism that we teach.

Segregation is on its deathbed-the question now is, how costly will the segregationists make the funeral?

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color, is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

Racial prejudice boils down to the deeply anti-American message that some people are born to fail.

Who makes and keeps the Jew or the Negro base, who but you, who exclude them from the rights which others enjoy?

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored-it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

Sometimes, it's [racial prejudice] like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.

Why should anyone think a white skin superior in evaluating the qualities of human life? I did not really admire a white skin so much myself. Did I not prefer the brown that came with exposure to the sun?

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

Race prejudice decreases values both real estate and human; crime, ignorance and filth decrease values.

The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

Cannot the nation that has absorbed ten million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb ten million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?