We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. – Martin Luther King,Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968

The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. – Martin Luther King,Jr., Nobel Prize lecture, 11 December 1968

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. – Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

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