The device of "rejection" may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security.

People would pass on us because we dressed weird. The Killers had just happened, The Libertines had just happened. Everyone was looking for the next Arctic Monkeys.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

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.

It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us.

After centuries of relative silence and enforced acceptance, we adapted a technique of exposing the problem by direct and dramatic methods. We had confidence that when we awakened the nation to the immorality and evil of inequality, there would be an upsurge of conscience followed by remedial action.