Selma

Selma Quotes

A chronicle of Martin Luther King's campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.

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.: [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.
Martin Luther King Jr.: Those who have gone before us say "no more"! No more!
[church congregation repeats in unison]
Martin Luther King Jr.: NO MORE!
[church congregation again repeats him]
Martin Luther King Jr.: That means protest! That means march! That means disturb the peace! That means jail! That means risk! That is hard!
[church congregation applauds]
President Lyndon B. Johnson: Are you trying to shit me, George Wallace? Are you trying to fuck over your president?
Martin Luther King Jr.: We must March! We Must Stand up!
Martin Luther King Jr.: We will not wait any longer!
[church congregation applauds]
Martin Luther King Jr.: Give us the vote!
Jimmie Lee Jackson: [stands up and applauds] That's right - no more!
Martin Luther King Jr.: We're not asking - we're demanding! Give us the vote!
[church congregation resoundingly repeats and applauds]
Coretta Scott King: [from trailer] People out there actually say they're gonna kill our children, they're trying to get into your head.
Andrew Young: Hey, what you need guns for?
Angry Marcher: The Bible says, an eye for an eye, reverend.
Andrew Young: Yeah?
Angry Marcher: I'm sick of this shit!
Andrew Young: How many guns you think they got down there? That's an entire army down there.
Andrew Young: What you got? A couple of .32s? A .38? Maybe a couple of old scatterguns? What?
Angry Marcher: I got enough to kill a couple of them crackers, that's what I got!
Andrew Young: And how many of us you think they gonna kill in retaliation?
Andrew Young: With their 12-gauge pump-actions, their Colt automatics, their remingtons, their helicopters, their tanks!
Andrew Young: We won't win that way, and I ain't talking about the Bible. I ain't talking what's right by God. I am talking facts. Cold, hard facts!
Andrew Young: Now you take two of them, and they take 10 of us.
Andrew Young: No. We have to win another way.
Martin Luther King Jr.: Selma it is.
Martin Luther King Jr.: [from trailer] WE MUST MAKE A MASSIVE DEMONSTRATION!
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: [Speaking to George Wallace] I'll be damned to let history put me in the same place as the likes of you.
Martin Luther King Jr.: We negotiate, we demonstrate, we resist.
Martin Luther King Jr.: We need your involvement here, Mr. President. We deserve your help as citizens of this country. Citizens under attack.
President Lyndon B. Johnson: Now, you listen to me. You listen to me. You're an activist. I'm a politician. You got one big issue. I got a hundred and one.
Martin Luther King Jr.: What happens when a man says enough is enough?
Rev. Hosea Williams: [while making their first attempt at crossing the bridge, Reverend Williams looks towards the water and then at John L. Lewis and asks] Can you swim?
Martin Luther King Jr.: It is unacceptable that they use their power to keep us voiceless.
President Lyndon B. Johnson: And we shall overcome.
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?
President Lyndon B. Johnson: Either King stops or Wallace stops or I'll stop them both!
J. Edgar Hoover: Mister President, you know we can shut men with power down, permanently and unequivocally.
Martin Luther King Jr.: No, Sheriff Clark, we're going in the front.
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!
President Lyndon B. Johnson: We shouldn't even be thinking about 1965, we should be thinking about 1985.

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