The question in crisis or ordeal is not: Are you going to be an extremist? The question is: What kind of extremist are you going to be?

- Lillian Smith

I broke every barrier I could to see things as they are.

- Lillian Smith

Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.

- Lillian Smith

Segregation is evil; there is no pattern of life which can dehumanize men as can the way of segregation.

- Lillian Smith

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: It is the only way we can leave the future open.

- Lillian Smith

To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are …

- Lillian Smith

Belief in Some One's right to punish you is the fate of all children in Judaic-Christian culture. But nowhere else, perhaps, have the rich seed-beds …

- Lillian Smith

For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become…

- Lillian Smith

Man, born of woman, has found it a hard thing to forgive her for giving him birth. The patriarchal protest against the ancient matriarch has borne st…

- Lillian Smith