“If you haven’t been baptized as an expression of your faith in Christ, do so as soon as possible, as Jesus commanded.”

“Look upward to your God for direction! Look inward into yourself and discover your talents! Look outward into your environment and get helped! Stop looking at one direction!”

“Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung”

“Strange how a single conversation can change you. Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect.”

“The church is in turmoil today. The church is not to reflect the world but to be a portrait of Jesus Christ.”

“God, I’m not going to look at what I don’t have. I’m looking unto you. I know in my weakness, you show up the strongest.”

“He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods; the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”

“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.”

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”

“The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.”

“The boss drives his workers; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on goodwill. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says “I”; the leader, “we.” The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how. The boss says, “Go”; the leader says, “Let’s go!”

“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”

“Where will we spend eternity—with God in that place of endless joy the Bible calls heaven, or apart from Him in that place of endless despair the Bible calls hell?”

“A mere motivator sees potentials in people and tells them to take actions. A true leader sees the same potentials in the same people and influences them to optimize them under his God-lead inspirations.”

“Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.”