One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.
The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.
I Have a Dream
We shall overcome.
You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
We must use time creatively.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
School takes 13 years, because that is how long it takes to break a child’s spirit.
Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the existence of justice for all people.
This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.
O America, how you’ve taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.
The existence of poverty in the US should not be accepted as a necessary evil or insoluble problem, but should be considered a crisis requiring emergency measures. It is a matter of will and priorities, not a matter of resources.
We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.