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.

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.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still...

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow...

The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of...

I suggested then that the prize was not given merely as recognition of past achievement, but also as recognition, a more profound recognition, that the nonviolent way, the American Negro’s way, was the answer to...

A lie cannot live.

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

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost...

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality...

What affects one in a major way, affects all in a minor way.

If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.

A right delayed is a right denied.

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

Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.

There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.

It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of...

One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. .

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is...

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative...