Martin Luther King, Jr.

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

“The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.”

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.”

“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”

“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”

“If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.”

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.”

“The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.”

“I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

“We will have to repent in this generation; not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'”

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

“I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.”

“One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.”

“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.”

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control.”

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”

“Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.”

“Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.”

“There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.”