Quotes About Action

Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.

No problem is solved when we idly wait for God to undertake full responsibility.

I will do everything in my power to make it so by outspoken agreement whenever proper, and determined opposition whenever necessary.

To attempt radical reform without adequate organization is like trying to sail a boat without a rudder.

You may well ask: Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path? You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement—not replace—the process of change through legal recourse. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.

We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always rip to do right.

We will be greatly misled if we feel that the problem will work itself out. Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.

It is not enough for the church to be active in the realm of ideas; it must move out to the arena of social action.

Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.

What we were really doing was withdrawing our cooperation from an evil system, rather than merely withdrawing our economic support from the bus company.

The hard truth is that neither Negro nor white has yet done enough to expect the dawn of a new day. While much has been done, it has been accomplished by too few and on a scale too limited for the breadth of the goal. Freedom is not won by a passive acceptance of suffering. Freedom is won by a struggle against suffering. By this measure, Negroes have not yet paid the full price for freedom. And whites have not yet faced the full cost of justice.

to swim, "Don't jump in that water until you learn how to swim." When actually you will never learn how to swim until you get in the water. People have to have an opportunity to develop themselves and govern

When I hear, "People aren't ready," that's like telling a person who is trying to swim, "Don't jump in that water until you learn how to swim." When actually you will never learn how to swim until you get in the water.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action...If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the wellbeing of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.

As a consequence of combining direct and legal action, far-reaching precedents were established, which served, in turn, to extend the areas of desegregation. Why We Can't Wait, 1963

Everything you do today impacts the next day as well as the future.

To her mind, when you were drowning and a rope was thrown your way, you didn't waste time thinking about what to do. You just grabbed it, then kicked and swam like the devil to safety.