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If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
by Martin Luther King

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quotes by Martin Luther King

We must build dikes of courage
to hold back the flood of fear.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive
is devoid of the power to love.
There is some good in the worst of us
and some evil in the best of us.
When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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If we are to go forward, we must go back
and rediscover those precious values -
that all reality hinges on moral foundations
and that all reality has spiritual control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Non-violence means avoiding not only external physical violence
but also internal violence of spirit.
You not only refuse to shoot a man,
but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is the only force capable of
transforming an enemy into friend.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind.
The time is always right to do the right thing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those
who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a Dream...
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

What are you doing for others?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man must evolve for all human conflict,
a method which rejects
revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I submit to you that if a man hasn't
discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every man must decide whether he will
walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am not interested in power for power's sake,
but I'm interested in power that is moral,
that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The means we use must be as pure
as the ends we seek.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek,
but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The time is always right to do what is right.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must accept finite disappointment,
but never lose infinite hope.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular;
but one must take it BECAUSE it is right.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it
as he who helps to perpetrate it.
He who accepts evil without protesting against it
is really cooperating with it.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must use time creatively.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life's most urgent question is:
what are you doing for others?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

An individual has not started living
until he can rise above the narrow confines
of his individualistic concerns
to the broader concerns of all humanity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We may have all come on different ships,
but we're in the same boat now.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Faith is taking the first step,
even when you don't see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Property is intended to serve life,
and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect,
it has no personal being.
It is part of the earth man walks on.
It is not man.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive
is devoid of the power to love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression
and cruelty by the bad people
but the silence over that by the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I look to a day when people will not be judged
by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is,
'What are you doing for others?'
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The hope of a secure and livable world
lies with disciplined nonconformists
who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding
and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I just want to do God's will.
And he's allowed me to go to the mountain.
And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land!
I may not get there with you,
but I want you to know tonight that
we as a people will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,
every hill and mountain shall be made low,
the rough places will be made straight
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Pity may represent little more
than the impersonal concern
which prompts the mailing of a check,
but true sympathy is the personal concern
which demands the giving of one's soul.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

To be a Christian without prayer
is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love
will have the final word in reality.
That is why right, temporarily defeated,
is stronger than evil triumphant.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

An individual who breaks a law that
conscience tells him is unjust,
and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment
in order to arouse the conscience
of the community over its injustice,
is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man Quotes and Sayings

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully, is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain

Seek always to do some good, somewhere.
Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.
You must give some time to your fellow man.
For remember, you don't live in a world all your own.
Your brothers are here too.
- Albert Schweitzer

An honest man is always a child.
- Socrates

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

A man is a success if he gets up in
the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
- Mark Twain

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing,
and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
- George Bernard Shaw

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal
of plain living and high thinking
the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants.
Man's happiness really lies in contentment.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

A man can do only what he can do.
But if he does that each day he can sleep at night
and do it again the next day.
- Albert Schweitzer

During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Nothing can stop the man with the right
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson

Intent is what can make a man succeed
when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
- Carlos Castaneda

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions;
it is easy in solitude to live after your own;
but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen

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