“If a man is called to be a street sweeper. He should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted , or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all hosts of heaven and earth pause to say; Here lives a great sweeper who did his job well "

“The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community.”

“I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.”

“Nonviolence 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.”

“Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.”

“At age fifteen, Martin entered Morehouse College in an accelerated program during World War II. As the U.S. pledged to fight fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, and colonialism, King was profoundly influenced through courses in sociology, history, philosophy, literature, and religion.”

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”

“Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.”

“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.”

“If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

“You just have to take the first step , you don't have to see the whole staircase.”

“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.”

“The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism”

“This is the glory of our religion: that when man decides to rise up from his mistakes, from his sin, from his evil, there is a loving God saying, “Come home, I still love you.”