“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

“We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.” 

“We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

“The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.”

“Find a voice in a whisper.”

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. 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 Latin 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. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.”

“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

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

“Todo hombre debe decidir si caminará a la luz del altruismo creativo o en la oscuridad del egoísmo destructivo. Éste es el juicio. La pregunta más urgente, e ineludible, de la vida es: ¿Qué estás haciendo por los demás?”

“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong”

“Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.”

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

“God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven time and time again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.”