“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

“The only people who do not experience frustrations are up in heaven or in the grave. The rest of us in the land of the living cannot escape frustrations any more than we can escape illness, taxes, or death. To be alive means to be frustrated. Therefore, to seek a life without frustration is like asking to die.”

“She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute, and that good is often an occasion more than a condition.”

“I learn more from books than from people”

“Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.”