A productive and happy life is not something you find; it is something you make.

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.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.

You have to keep moving forward

I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.

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.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'