Selma Quotes

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.

Movie: Selma
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.

Movie: Selma
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]

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

Movie: Selma
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]

Movie: Selma
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.

Movie: Selma
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.

Movie: Selma
Martin Luther King Jr.: Selma it is.

Movie: Selma
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.

Movie: Selma
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. 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? With their 12-gauge pump-actions, their Colt automatics, their Remingtons, their helicopters, their tanks! 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! Now you take two of them, and they take 10 of us. No. We have to win another way.

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

Movie: Selma
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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie: Selma
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?

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

Movie: Selma
Col. Al Lingo: If the Lord Jesus and Elvis Presley came visiting and they said [Referring to Sheriff Jim Clark]
Col. Al Lingo: Jim, we need you to treat them [racial epitaph removed]
Col. Al Lingo: nice. Jim Clark would be the shit out of the pair of them and throw them in jail.

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

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

Movie: Selma
President Lyndon B. Johnson: And we shall overcome.

Movie: Selma
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!

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

Movie: Selma
Gov. George Wallace: Mr. President, malcontents are disrupting Alabama and it's your responsibility to stop them.
President Lyndon B. Johnson: They're protesting about the right to vote and the way they're treated in your state, so that's your problem and it's your responsibility and it's on your watch.

Movie: Selma
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.

Movie: Selma
Gov. George Wallace: How in Christ's sake does Malcolm X slip into my state, meet with the wife of the other one [referring to MLK]
Gov. George Wallace: and give an actual speech to these [racial epitaph removed]
Gov. George Wallace: who are already riled up enough, I mean how does that happen?

Movie: Selma