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.
You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.
If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.
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.
Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.
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.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
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.
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
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.