Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, while only a fraction of that amount is appropriated to service the densely populated slums. – Martin Luther King,Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967

If… the machine of government… is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. – Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. – Martin Luther King,Jr., March 22, 1956

Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation in the world speaking of his aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores. – Martin Luther King,Jr., about Ho Chi Minh, Beyond Vietnam lecture, 4 April 1968