Quotes from Taylor Branch

There's a natural tendency to sanitize and polish any historical icon whether it be George Washington chopping down the cherry tree or Martin Luther King saying, "I have a dream."

Human nature was such that individuals could respond to reason, to the call of justice, and even to the love perfection of the religious spirit, but nations, corporations, labor unions, and other large social groups would always be selfish.

It matches the capacity of evil to inflict suffering with an even more enduring capacity to absorb evil, all the while persisting in love.

He scolded his listeners for being eager to sell off their few productive assets in exchange for articles of prestige. "You say you want a definition of perpetual motion?" he asked. "Give the average Negro a Cadillac and tell him to park it on some land he owns.

Rauschenbusch rejected the usual religious emphasis on matters of piety, metaphysics, and the supernatural, interpreting Christianity instead as a spirit of brotherhood made manifest in social ethics.

Among civilian whites in general, reactions wound more softly in the same coil: a stab of sympathy and generalized remorse, followed quickly by resentment of exaggerated accusations and then a growing sense of innocence.