Martin Luther King, Jr.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do what is right.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

Business is the salt of life.

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.

A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Any 20 year-old who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain.