Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

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.

But the judgement of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions,...

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love

Even if they try to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that thereare some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they areworth dying for. And if a person has not found...

[I] know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems….

No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.

If you can’t run then walk If you can’t walk then crawl but whatever you do don’t give up

What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice.

We all came in on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of...

Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions...

It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But…the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to...

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.

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...

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may...

If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all...

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full...

It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said...

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be...

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.

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

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of...

Through violence you may murder the hater, but you cannot murder hate.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win, and their participants know it.

Vystup na prvy schod s vierou. Nemusis vidiet cele schodisko. Jednoducho vystup na prvy schod.

I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

The amazing aftermath of Birmingham, the sweeping Negro Revolution, revealed to people all over the land that there are no outsiders in all these fifty states of America. When a police dog buried his fangs...

Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth...

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands...

Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth....

One of these days I’m going to put my body where my mind is.

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.