Martin Luther King Jr.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

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.

We bust build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

We are free to yield to truth.

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

An honest man is always a child.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change –only to give stability to one beautiful moment.