It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.
You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression.
There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.
I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism.
It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless.
It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.
Without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
My mommy always said there were no monsters – no real ones – but there are.
Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential.
Brutality was imprisoned in a lumious glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world.
My uncertainty disappeared. Segregation is evil, and I cannot, as a minister, condone evil.
The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?
I just want to leave a committed life behind.
While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question ‘what killed him’ is more important.
But by all means, keep moving.
People are often led to causes and often become committed to great ideas through persons who personify those ideas. They have to find the embodiment of the idea in flesh and blood in order to commit themselves to it.
There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.
So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind – it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact – I can only submit to the edict of others.
Faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future.