“The only way to smile at harvest time is to appreciate the invisible fruits in the visible seed. Hungry people are not those who have no seed. They are those who kill seeds!”

“Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you;until you have culrivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy”

“Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there.”

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

“Don’t be deceived; who they say you are, is not who you become. You become who you think you are. You take the chair in your own programmings!”

“Life is hard but so very beautiful”

“I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the Literature of Negroes. Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.”

“The trick is not caring that it hurts.”

“If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive."

“I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.”

“Sir Pherozeshah had seemed to me like the Himalaya, the Lokamanya like the ocean. But Gokhale was as the Ganges.” 

“There's no God higher than truth.”

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”

“In the middle of chaos lies opportunity

“He looked at her and said the same thing that He says to each of us today: “Go on your way and from now on sin no more.” Jesus wasn’t excusing the wrongdoing, and He wasn’t ignoring the destructive power that sin can have in our lives. Instead, He was offering a new life that was free of sin. He was saying to this broken woman: Today can be different! This is the same thing that God says to you. Today can be different! Today can be a place to begin again! If your life has become a life full of worry, fear, negative thinking, sickness, despair, sin, and regret, today can be different.”