Find a voice in a whisper.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

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

The time is always right to do what is right.

We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late’.

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate, adding deeper darkness to a night that is already void of stars.

You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.

No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

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 force. I decided to follow the latter course.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.

Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But, conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.

Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.