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

A lie cannot live.

Find a voice in a whisper.

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

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.

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.

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’.

Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning.

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters.

When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

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

In a real sense faith is total surrender to God.

Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.

It is hardly a moral act to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure.

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

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

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.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

When I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.

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