Quotes from Coretta Scott King

We can prevent many people from becoming terrorists by truly listening to people who feel they've been treated unjustly and responding to their concerns with a sense of justice and compassion.

The failure to invest in youth reflects a lack of compassion and a colossal failure of common sense.

Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to live his life serving others.

Just be what you are. And I try to be my best self and be what I am and knowing what I am and be satisfied with that. And if people don't know it, maybe they'll eventually know it.

Our Congress passes laws which subsidize corporation farms, oil companies, airlines, and houses for suburbia. But when they turn their attention to the poor, they suddenly become concerned about balancing the budget and cut back on the funds for Head Start, Medicare, and mental health appropriations.

Isn't it strange how the leaders of nations can talk so eloquently about peace while they prepare for war? ... There is no way to make peace while preparing for war.

The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.

Nelson Mandela sat in a South African prison for 27 years. He was nonviolent. He negotiated his way out of jail. His honor and suffering of 27 years in a South African prison is really ultimately what brought about the freedom of South Africa. That is nonviolence.

If you use weapons of war to bring about peace, you're going to have more war and destruction.

All we seek is an America where every person is given the chance to productively contribute to his country and where he can receive a fair and equitable share of the wealth that production creates.

Mama and Daddy King represent the best in manhood and womanhood, the best in a marriage, the kind of people we are trying to become.

Behind every good man, there's a good woman reminding you I knew you when you didn't have nothing.

If a man had nothing that was worth dying for, then he was not fit to live.

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens.

We should not forget that in the '60s, George Wallace's motto was 'segregation forever,' and that he did nothing to deter bombings and other acts of violence and, by his actions, condoned them.

I believe that women know if their husbands are unfaithful. They feel it.

Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.

I am convinced that the women of the world, united without any regard for national or racial dimensions, can become a most powerful force for international peace and brotherhood.

Women, in general, are not part of the corruption of the past, so they can give a new kind of leadership, a new image for mankind.

Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union.

People don't ever have to starve to death; there are solutions. We have failed if we can't eradicate hunger in Africa and Ethiopia.

Nonviolence would work today, it would work 2,000 years from now, it would work 5,000 years from now.

Knowing what I know now, if I could have chosen parents, I would have chosen exactly the ones God selected for me.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.