Selma Quotes

Coretta Scott King: [from trailer] People out there actually say they're gonna kill our children, they're trying to get into your head.

Martin Luther King Jr.: We must march! We must stand up!

Martin Luther King Jr.: [from trailer] WE MUST MAKE A MASSIVE DEMONSTRATION!

Martin Luther King Jr.: [somberly yet passionately speaking to church congregation at a funeral] Who murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson? Every white lawman who abuses the law to terrorize. Every white politician who feeds on prejudice and hatred. Every white preacher who preaches the Bible and stays silent before his white congregation. Who murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson? Every Negro man and woman who stands by without joining this fight as their brothers and sisters are brutalized, humiliated, and ripped from this Earth.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: Are you trying to shit me, George Wallace? Are you trying to fuck over your president?

Rev. Hosea Williams: [while making their first attempt at crossing the bridge, Reverend Williams looks towards the water and then at John Lewis] Can you swim?

Martin Luther King Jr.: Our lives are not fully lived if we're not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Selma it is.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: [Speaking to George Wallace] I'll be damned to let history put me in the same place as the likes of you.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: And we shall overcome.

Martin Luther King Jr.: What happens when a man says enough is enough?

Martin Luther King Jr.: It is unacceptable that they use their power to keep us voiceless.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: We shouldn't even be thinking about 1965, we should be thinking about 1985.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: But when you have people coming inside the White House, inside the White House, on a tour, they just sat down, Martin, sat down in the main corridor and started singing and shouting, well, I won't have it!

J. Edgar Hoover: Mister President, you know we can shut men with power down, permanently and unequivocally.

Ralph Abernathy: This information, coming from the FBI, I assume from a high level, the same high level that's been tracking us like animals?

Martin Luther King Jr.: No, Sheriff Clark, we're going in the front.

Martin Luther King Jr.: We negotiate, we demonstrate, we resist.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: Either King stops or Wallace stops or I'll stop them both!

Martin Luther King Jr.: God was the first to cry.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Boycotting the buses in Montgomery. Segregation in Birmingham. Now? Voting in Selma. One struggle ends just to go right to the next and the next. If you think of in that way, it's hard robe, but I don't think of it that way. I think of these efforts is one effort and that effort is for our life. A life as a community, a life as a nation. For our lives we can do this. We must do this, we see children become victims of one of the most vicious crimes ever perpetrated against humanity within the walls of their own church. They are sainted now. The are the sainted ones in this quest for freedom and the speak to us still. The say to us, to all of us colors and creeds that we must do this. The say to us that it is unacceptable for more than 50% of Selma to be negro and yet less than two percent of negroes here being able to vote and determine their own destiny by humans beings. They say to us that the local white leadership use their power that keep us away from the ballot box and keep us voiceless. As long as I am unable to exercise my constitutional right to vote, I do not have command of my own life, I can not determine my own destiny, for this determined for me by people who rather see me suffer than succeed. Those that have gone before us say no more, no more. That means protest, that means march, that means disturb the peace, that means jail, that means risk and that is hard. We will not wait any longer. Give us the vote.