March On Selma Quotes

#1. In 1965, as Ralph Gleason has reported, when Martin Luther King's march on Selma, Alabama, was brutally attacked by local and state constabulary, Louis Armstrong, then in Copenhagen, said after watching the carnage on television, "They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.

Nat Hentoff

#2. [T]he strike is inherently dangerous to the rich, and to the corporations who have brought this country to her knees, because it is the only defense the ordinary citizen has.

Keith Olbermann

#3. It seems as if when you try to do just one thing and nothing but, you can't do it at all. You do everything better if there's more than one thing.

Nancy Hale

#4. I had no way of predicting that Selma to Montgomery was indeed to be the last great civil rights march of the era, and that everything afterward would indeed by 'post-civil rights.

Junius Williams

#5. Annella would sooner spill my blood than court me. Furthermore, I like my women a little less spirited. I don't want to have to fear that my wife would put a blade to my throat in the middle of the night. Hell, I'd have to sleep with one eye open.

Victoria Roberts

#6. There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons.

Douglas Brinkley

#7. To us investigators, the concept 'soul' is irrelevant and a matter for laughter.

Ernst Mach

#8. -You forgot something important! -What? -It's under my sweater! -WHAT?! -Me!

Cornelia Funke

#9. I was proud to march beside some of the most notable Civil Rights activists, such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery.

Charles B. Rangel

#10. With 'Selma,' I grew up in Alabama, 45 minutes away from Selma. I have gone to that commemorative march many times with my parents.

Andre Holland

#11. Best thing that ever happened to me, that shredded washer," he whispered.
"Too bad I didn't know what a washer was or I would have shredded it myself," I whispered back and he burst out laughing.

Kristen Ashley

#12. Forgetting what it's like to suffer can be a good thing, since suffering can make people too cutthroat for society's good. But suffering also breeds certain capacities that are easily lost, such as the ability to focus and a willingness to engage with conflict.

Ben Ryder Howe

#13. I stuck my tongue out at her because I'm not all that mature and I still enjoy doing the things that cracked me up when I was ten.

Elle Casey

#14. For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

#15. The courage of federal Judge Frank Johnson is well-known.He was the one that gave the legal authority for the right to march from Selma to Montgomery, and he suffered dearly for it. He was ostracized and rejected. His life was threatened as a result of it.

Dick Durbin

#16. It was one of those rare nights when I was kept awake not by my nightmares and anxieties but by something exciting and exhilarating. Most nights I lay awake waiting for some unexpected disaster ... I think I somehow felt that as long as I was conscious, nothing bad could happen ...

Azar Nafisi

#17. Said he little prince "But why do you always speak in riddles?"
"I solve them all" said the snake

Antoine De Saint-Exupery