Martin Luther King Jr.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t walk run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but by all means keep moving.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

Man is God’s highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

For we put the power in the people.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much of it.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality… is the highest act of wisdom.