I always thought I was able and competent all the while I was rearing them.

When I look back at my role as labor secretary, I regret that I didn't fight harder. I mean, inside the meeting rooms in the old executive office building and the cabinet office, and even when I was talking in private to the president - President Clinton, I did try to argue my case, but I feel, in retrospect, I should have argued even more passionately. Maybe I even should have threatened to resign.

In retrospect, I certainly think it would have been much better from a public relations viewpoint not to have played the games, because I did respect President Kennedy a great deal.

I always felt like I could blow it and nothing would never happen until this happened.

Her lesson all the time was “To them to whom much has been given, of them will much be required.”

[My father] used to say all the time, “You’re in a struggle, but if you get in a fight and lose your temper, you’ll lose the fight. So don’t get mad, get smart.”

It was only with her help that I did everything. The tragedy was that after 40 years of marriage she died of cancer. I say that if Martin and I had not married the little country girls we married from Alabama, you never would have heard our names.

Everything I did, and I think everything Martin Luther King did, was because we allowed our lives to be in tune with what we felt to be a divine purpose. And it didn’t matter whether we lived or died. It didn’t matter how much money we made, or what we accomplished.

It was only with her help that I did everything. The tragedy was that after 40 years of marriage she died of cancer.

I knew what I had done wrong. I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television. The second time around I spent almost no money on television. The only money I spent on television, I spent on Ted Turner's station, late at night on something called Creature Feature and wrestling. Because those were things that I knew people looked at. But we spent most of our money organizing people door-to-door.