You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.
Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.
The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people’s children.
Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn’t say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn’t have a mental or physical handicap. He said, Let all children come unto me.
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’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
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.