Every revolutionary movement has its peaks of united activity and its valleys of debate and internal confusion. This debate might well have been little more than a healthy internal difference of opinion, but the press loves the sensational and it could not allow the issue to remain within the private domain of the movement. In every drama there has to be an antagonist and a protagonist, and if the antagonist is not there the press will find and build one.

Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.

I did not usurp the crown. I picked it up from the gutter; the people placed it on my head. I was king of the people as the Bourbons are kings of the nobles.

Witnessing the drama of Negro progress elsewhere in the world, witnessing a level of conspicuous consumption at home exceeding anything in our history, it was natural that by 1963 Negroes would rise with resolution and demand a share of governing power, and living conditions measured by American standards rather than by the standards of colonial impoverishment.

There might, Gentlemen, be an impropriety in my taking notice, in this Address to you, of an anonymous production - but the manner in which that performance has been introduced to the Army - the effect it was intended to have, together with some other circumstances, will amply justify my observations on the tendency of that Writing.

The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.