It’s time for greatness – not for greed. It’s a time for idealism – not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.
You can’t be what you can’t see.
Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right.
I’ve always hated being hemmed in or seeing anybody being hemmed in. Even when I was the smallest child, I couldn’t bear being told I couldn’t drink at a so-called white drinking fountain.
Service is what life is all about.
Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.
Service is the rent we pay for living.
Children teach us to be courageous and to stand up against injustice.
You didn’t have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do have a choice about the kind of parent you will be.
Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn.
The outside world told black kids when I was growing up that we weren’t worth anything. But our parents said it wasn’t so, and our churches and our schoolteachers said it wasn’t so. They believed in us, and we, therefore, believed in ourselves.
If we think we have ours and don’t owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans.
Don’t just dream about grandiose acts of doing good. Every day do small ones, that add up over time to positive patterns.
We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption.
We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.
When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people’s children, I’m doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found.
Understand and be confident that each of us can make a difference by caring and acting in small as well as big ways.
We are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another.
Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.
So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.