If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
There is no gain without struggle.
Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.
We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.
It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.
Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there “is” such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
A right delayed is a right denied.
Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.
A lie cannot live.
It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.