“Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did ... the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on-including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”

“you should not be led by popular opinion;” 

“What you are speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you say.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON”

“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?” 

“poverty in a family of twelve children.”

“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.”

“Many people live in the waiting room, not because of God’s unwillingness to promote, but because of their unwillingness to be faithful in their current life situation.”

“If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.”

“If the problems you have this year are the same problems you had last year, then you are not a leader. You are rather a problem on your own that must be solved.”

“People can poison people; people can also promote people. People can push people up; people can also pull people down. Don’t just follow people cheerfully; follow people carefully!”

“What differentiates victors and victims are visions and vigor. Victims won't get the vim to step out of their situations.”

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

“We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. So however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne."   Yet that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right.  "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children all over this nation - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, "Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last.”

“Henri Nouwen said, “In order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others…. thus we become free to be compassionate.” When you base your worth and identity on your relationship to Christ, you are freed from the expectations of others, and that allows you to really serve them best.”