Power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals. - Robert A. Caro

Anyone who held that belief, as Richard Rovere was to explain in The New Yorker, “forgot the wisdom of history, which is that members of the United States Senate almost invariably come to grief when they try to win Presidential nominations for themselves or to manipulate national conventions for any purpose whatsoever. For many reasons — patronage is one, and control of delegations is another — the big men at conventions are governors and municipal leaders.

Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there.” And he went beyond Douglass to espouse a doctrine of passive, non-violent resistance. “Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness,” King said. “Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.… This is a nonviolent protest. We are depending on moral and spiritual forces.

Nothing he has ever done has been tainted by legality [Robert Moses quoting an anecdote about himself].