A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
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.
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.
Power at its best is love implementing the demand of justice.
Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.
To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.
Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.
Without love, benevolence becomes egotism.
We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society.
Be true to what you said on paper.
We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others? Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.
Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.
Carve a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial.