“Your smile can heal thousands; but your anger can kill millions. Your "hand-shake" can encourage tens of people while your "finger-pointing" can turn ten thousands away from you!”

“When negative thoughts come, the key is to never verbalize them.”

“A sign of a great team leader is the proper placement of people.”

“Some mornings I walked out into the courtyard and every living thing there, the seagulls and wagtails, the small trees, and even the stray blades of grass seemed to smile and shine in the sun. It was at such times, when I perceived the beauty of even this small, closed-in corner of the world, that I knew that some day my people and I would be free.”

“Let's stop discussing about who a wise person is and start learning to become wise persons. Begin acquiring knowledge at the very moment you discover that there is something called "knowledge"!”

“We did live in dire poverty. And one of the things that I hated was poverty. Some people hate spiders. Some people hate snakes. I hated poverty. I couldn't stand it. My mother couldn't stand the fact that we were doing poorly in school, and she prayed and she asked God to give her wisdom. What could she do to get her young sons to understand the importance of developing their minds so that they control their own lives? God gave her the wisdom. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn't think it was that wise. Turn off the TV, let us watch only two or three TV programs during the week. And with all that spare time read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Libraries and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn't read but we didn't know that. I just hated this. My friends were out having a good time. Her friends would criticize her. My mother didn't care. But after a while I actually began to enjoy reading those books. Because we were very poor, but between the covers of those books I could go anywhere. I could be anybody. I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. And as I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who has the most to do with you, and what happens to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. And I came to understand that I had control of my own destiny. And at that point I didn't hate poverty anymore, because I knew it was only temporary. I knew I could change that. It was incredibly liberating for me. Made all the difference.” 

“poverty in a family of twelve children.”

“his mistake in having stopped only three feet from gold, “but,” he said, “that experience was a blessing in disguise. It taught me to keep on keeping on, no matter how hard the going may be, a lesson I needed to learn before I could succeed in anything.”

“The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.”

“Don't ever be discouraged with yourself because you have not arrived at success, but instead be pleased that you are pressing toward it.”

“Geweldloos verzet kon volgens hem alleen vruchten afwerpen als de groepen waartegen het verzet werd gepleegd over enig moreel besef beschikten”

“When the actions becomes frequent than the words, success becomes heavier than the dreams. Do more, say less.”

“«Decida qué hacer y hágalo; decida qué no hacer y no lo haga». La evaluación de prioridades, sin embargo, no es tan sencilla. Muchas veces las opciones no son blancas o negras, sino de muchos tonos grises. He descubierto que lo último que uno sabe es qué debe”

“It is strange that the world accepts enthusiasm in every realm but the spiritual.”

“This child, with his naive outlook on life was the compass which showed them the degree of their departure from what they knew but did not want to know.”