"The time is always right to do what is right."

"God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able."

"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."

"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 in the ankle of a small child in Birmingham, he buried his fangs in the ankle of every American. The bell of man's inhumanity to man does not toll for any one man. It tolls for you, for me, for all of us."

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."

"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"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."

"Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness."

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

"A right delayed is a right denied."

"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 expressing the highest respect for the law."

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

"In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty."

"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 that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick."

"The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

"I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority."

"Nonviolence is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil."

"One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam."

"The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community."

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

"That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing."

"And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."

"I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

"I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

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

"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

"War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow."

"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good."

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

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

"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."

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. ... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just."

"I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law."

"We are not makers of history. We are made by history."

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

"We have guided missiles and misguided men."

"We can all get more together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to effect change, and we need power."

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control."

"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 have a dream."

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

"The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt."

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right."

"Mother Dear, one day I'm going to turn this world upside down."

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