Born on November 29th

"I believe that Christianity in the United States has been dragging its feet, and I don't think there's any other force in America that has been more detrimental to the solution of our racial problems than Christianity."

"During past years, like frightened children, we were afraid to eat the strong meat of human rights and instead sucked the milk of civil rights from the breasts of white liberals, black Uncle Toms, and Aunt Jemimas."

"Tremendous changes are taking place in our country, eradicating the concept of second-class citizenship."

"I am proud to be a member of the Congress of the United States."

"Only legislative, judicial, and executive action can completely guarantee the victory of the free world."

"I'm advocating that American citizens interested in democracy should stay out of chain stores."

"The black masses must demand and refuse to accept nothing less than that proportionate percentage of the political spoils such as jobs, elective offices and appointments... They must reject the shameful racial tokenism that characterizes the political life of America today."

"Where Negroes provide 20 percent of the vote, they should have 20 per cent of the jobs."

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'"

"Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."

"Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success."

"The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."

"Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ."

"You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."

"We are what we believe we are."

"How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete."

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."