Martin Luther King, Jr.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

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

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.

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

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely the most numerous.

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.